Peter Benchley - The Deep

“She didn’t roll over when she went down, did she?”

“Not so far’s I know. But I didn’t linger to see how she fell.”

“So if her guts were ripped out clean, it’s likely that the shells went down first and farthest. The cigar boxes would be atop them.”

“Those boxes were wood, remember, and flimsy. They’d be nothing now.”

Treece nodded. “Still, they’d not have been crushed by the cases of shells. And the ampules’ mass in water is almost nothing, so they’d not have sunk deep in the sand.”

“If you ask me, the storms has busted ’em all up by now.”

“I’d have thought so, too.” Treece fingered one of the ampules. “Until these turned up.”

“But they were in a hole, you say, protected. The others is gone, I’ll wager.”

“Like as not. But we’re having a look tonight.”

Coffin drained his glass and banged it on the table.

“Damn fine. I’ll be ready.”

Treece smiled. “No. We’ll go. If we find some more, then we’ll need you.”

“But it’s my ship!” Coffin hammered his chest with a fist. “You think I’m not fit, is that it?”

His eyes were bright, his face flushed from the rum.

“I’m fit as a bloody stallion! How old do you think I am?”

Treece said calmly, “I know how old you are, Adam.”

“You, then,” Coffin said, glaring at Sanders. “How old do you think I am?”

Sanders looked at him, quickly matching dates in his mind. Coffin had to be at least seventy. “I’d say… sixty.”

“See that, Treece?” Coffin laughed.

“Sixty!” He turned back to Sanders. “I’m seventy-bloody-two, my boy! Fit as a stallion!”

“Adam,” Treece said, touching Coffin’s arm, “no one said you weren’t fit. But I don’t want anyone to see you diving on the wreck. You’re too well known.”

Treece warmed to his lie. “You’re a bloody celebrity! If people knew you were diving on that wreck, they’d right away spot something was up.”

Coffin leaned back in his chair, mollified by the flattery. “There’s sense in what you’re saying. Wouldn’t want to give anything away.” He eyed his empty glass. “I say let’s drink on it.”

“No,” Treece said, standing up. “I’ve got work to do.”

Coffin followed Treece and the Sanderses down the path to the road. Treece opened the door of the Hillman and-like an octopus insinuating itself tentacle by tentacle into a crevice in a reef-slowly fit one long limb after another into the driver’s compartment.

Coffin said, “Don’t breathe too deep, or you’ll blow the horn with your chest.”

Treece said to Sanders, “You want to follow, or can you find your way?”

“We’ll find it. You go ahead.”

Treece looked at Gail. He paused, apparently considering his words. “You’ll stay at the hotel tonight?”

“I guess so,” she said. “Why?”

“D. And keep your door locked. I don’t want to scare you, but Cloche is sure to know you’re there.”

Gail remembered the sight of the motorbikes that morning. “I know.”

Treece started the car, waited for a taxicab to pass, then made a U-turn on the narrow road and chugged off toward St. David’s.

After the car had disappeared from view, Coffin stared down the empty road. The Sanderses mounted their motorbikes and put on their helmets.

“Good-by, Mr. Coffin,” Gail said.

Coffin did not respond. “I knew him when he was a boy,” he said. “A fine lad.”

Gail and David looked at each other. “I’m sure,” she said. “He seems to be a fine man.”

“Aye. Straight as God Himself. He deserves better.”

“Better than what?”

“Loneliness. Sadness. It’s one thing for old croaks like me. We’re supposed to be lonely. But a young fella like him-it ain’t right. He should have sons to pass along what he knows.”

Sanders said, “Maybe he likes living alone.”

Coffin looked at Sanders. His eyes were cicatrices in his bony head. “Likes it, huh?” he said sharply. “Likes it, does he? A lot you know.” He turned away.

David and Gail watched Coffin walk up the hill into his house.

Sanders said, “What did I say?”

“I don’t know. But whatever it was wasn’t the right thing.”

Sanders looked at his watch. “Let’s go. I’ve got to get all the way back to St. David’s before dark.”

The moon had risen well above the horizon, casting an avenue of gold across the still water.

Treece’s boat was forty-three feet long, a wooden craft with the name Corsair painted on the stern. Standing next to Treece at the wheel, Sanders looked aft. The hull, he guessed, had once been a standard-design fishing boat, but by now Treece had so radically altered it to fit his peculiar needs that it looked eccentric.

There were winches on both sides of the cabin, racks for scuba tanks along the gunwales, and, where a fighting chair would be bolted to the deck, an air compressor. An aluminum tube, perhaps twelve feet long and four inches in diameter, was lashed to the starboard gunwale. The lamp in the binnacle threw a faint yellow glow on Treece’s face.

Sanders said, “There are so many stars up there, I can’t pick out St. David’s light.”

“Only one that winks regular,” said Treece.

The sea was flat calm, and the lights on shore, a mile away, were passing with mechanical smoothness.

“All the lights look the same,” Sanders said.

“How can you tell where you are?”

“Habit. Once you know the shore line, you can tell by the way lights are clustered. Things like Orange Grove and Coral Beach stick out. You’ll see.”

“How do you avoid the reefs in the dark? You can’t see the rocks.”

“A night like this is a bit sticky. There’s not enough breeze to raise many breakers. You pick your way through.” Treece smiled. “After you make a couple of mistakes, you recess your prop in the hull and put a pair of steel skegs along the bottom so when you hit a rock you get a noisy bong that tells you to back off.”

Sanders heard a whine from the bow. He looked through the windshield and saw Charlotte crouched on the pulpit that extended out from the bow. Her haunches were quivering, and her tail twitched excitedly.

“What’s her problem?”

“Phosphorescence,” said Treece. “Stick your head over the side.”

Sanders leaned over the starboard gunwale and looked forward. A mantle of tiny yellow-white lights covered the water displaced by the bow of the boat.

“It’s called bioluminescence. The boat disturbs the micro-organisms in the water, and they react by giving off light. Some of them are worms, others are crustaceans. Same as fireflies, basically. The Japs used to rub them on their hands during the war so they could read maps in the jungle at night. Charlotte wants to eat them.”

Sanders said, “She’s got quite an appetite.”

“One day she’ll be lunch herself. A while back, she got all hot over a shark that was cruising about; jumped on the bastard’s back and tried to take a bite out of him.”

“Why didn’t it eat her?”

Treece laughed. “The shark was bloody terrified-not exactly accustomed to having some hairy thing jump on him from above. Took a big shit and zoom!-off he went. He came back ’round by and by, but by then I had the dumb bitch out of the water.”

“Why do you bring her along?”

“She gets lonely if I leave her.” Treece swung the wheel a quarter turn to the left. “Besides, she’s company.”

They fell silent, watching the glassy night water and the twinkling lights on shore. Sanders took a deep breath, exulting in the salty freshness of the air. He could not remember feeling so good, so alive. He felt as if he were living out the dreams of his youth, and, like a child, he was pleased-almost proud-to be alone with Treece. He was mildly ashamed to recognize that he was glad Gail was not with them. This was something special, an experience that would be his alone. He reprimanded himself: Don’t be a middle-aged adolescent. The best reason for not bringing Gail along is that this might be dangerous.