Peter Benchley - The Deep

“Don’t you keep ice?”

“No need. Salt keeps ’em fine.” Treece took the fish from her. “That ought to keep him busy for a while.” He said to Sanders, “Let me go in first.

I want to see him, make sure he knows what’s going on. Let a bastard like that blind-side you, it’ll be a nasty evening. And don’t go sticking your hands in any holes. For all I know, he’s got relatives in there sharing the rent with him.” He lowered his mask over his face, rolled off the gunwale, resurfaced, and reached for bag, fish, and light.

Sanders followed immediately and found, as Treece had said, that the extra weight and the air trapped in the plastic bags roughly counterbalanced each other, so he sank without effort.

The cove was not deep-fifteen or, at most, twenty feet, Sanders estimated as he watched the beam from his light move between the sandy bottom and the boat above. The canvas bag was cumbersome: it tugged at his left arm, so Sanders pressed it against his stomach and followed Treece’s receding light.

Treece waited at the entrance to the cave-a dark hole, taller than a man, in the craggy face of the cliff. When Sanders joined him, Treece shined his light into the cave and swung it from side to side.

At first, the cave seemed to be empty-pocked gray limestone walls extending thirty feet into the darkness. Then Treece fixed his light on a back corner of the cave and pointed with his finger, and Sanders saw something move.

Slowly, Treece swam into the cave, holding the fish in front of him. Sanders trailed a few feet behind.

At the base of one wall there was a heap of rocks, the result of a partial collapse of the wall ages ago. Treece held the fish up to the wall.

The snout of the moray emerged from a crevice between the rocks and the wall. Sanders had seen morays in aquariums, but never anything to rival the size of the green body that now slithered out of the crevice. It was more than a foot thick, top to bottom, and at least six inches wide.

The moray writhed and twisted until it had extricated as much of itself-about four feet-as it intended to. Then it hung suspended from the rocks, glancing, with its cold pig eyes, at Sanders, at Treece, at the fish. The mouth opened and closed rhythmically, exposing the long needle teeth joined by viscid, mucous strands that glittered in the light.

The head tilted slightly and-so quickly that, afterward, Sanders would not recall having seen it move-seized the fish.

Treece did not let go; he held the fish just forward of the tail. The moray pulled, then stopped, then suddenly began to spin its body, like a rug unrolling, until a chunk of fish belly tore away. The eel backed off, swallowing, its teeth forcing the flesh back into its throat, green skin rippling with the effort. Then it struck again, this time grabbing the fish’s backbone, and yanked the fish from Treece’s grasp. It tried to retreat into its hole, but the fish was too big to fit sideways through the crevice, so the moray contented itself with jamming its prey into the narrow opening and dismembering it from below.

Treece motioned for Sanders to follow him, and, reluctant as he was to turn his back, in darkness, on the moray, Sanders obeyed.

The roof of the cave was about eight feet high, and Sanders saw the beam from Treece’s light shine on it, then saw Treece’s canvas bag floating upward to it. The bag nudged the roof and rested against it. Sanders reached up and placed his own bag next to Treece’s, then joined Treece on the bottom.

They dug a wide, deep hole in the sand and dumped the bags of ampules into it. They leveled off the hole with sand, to keep the bags from floating free, then returned to the boat.

They made three more trips, each time digging a new hole. When they left the cave at the end of the last trip, the moray had devoured all but the last few inches of the fish: the tail still protruded from the crevice, quivering as it was bitten from beneath.

“How big is that thing?” Sanders asked when they were aboard the boat.

“Percy? Never seen the whole of him, but I bet he’s all of ten feet. Soon as it gets full dark, he’ll come out and prowl around. Some night we can go down and see him when he comes out.”

“No, thanks. He looks mean enough in his hole. I don’t want to meet him in the open.”

“What? I thought you shark killers didn’t know the meaning of fear.”

“Look, dammit…” Sanders was annoyed at Treece’s needling, wanted him to stop, but was not eager to provoke a confrontation, nor to beg.

“Don’t get all fired up,” Treece said.

He snapped his fingers at the dog, and she jumped from the boat onto the dock. “Lead the way, Charlotte. See if there’s any brigands lurking.” The dog trotted happily toward the path, sniffing at the underbrush.

Treece pulled the two empty air tanks from the rack and set them on the dock. “Best fill these tonight.”

When they reached the house, they saw a paper-wrapped package outside the kitchen door. Treece picked it up, smelled it, and said, “Supper.”

“Fish?” Gail asked, queasy from the recollection of the fish box on the dock.

“No. Meat.” Treece opened the door and held it for them.

Gail said, “Don’t you ever lock your door?”

“No. Like I told you, only the Spanish have faith in locks.”

Inside, Treece said to Sanders, “Fix me a bit of rum while I throw this beast on the fire.”

“Sure.” Sanders said to Gail, “You want anything?”

“Not yet. I’d like to take a shower. I feel like a week-old bass.”

“Know how to work the heater?” Treece said.

“Heater?”

“There’s a gas heater next to the stall. Turn the valve half a turn clockwise and wait about two minutes. That’ll start warming it, and by the time you’re finished showering, it’ll be nice and hot.”

“Thanks.” Gail left the kitchen.

Sanders handed Treece a glass of rum and sipped at his scotch. “Anything I can do?”

“No. Rest your bones.”

Sanders sat at the table and watched Treece light the stove, pour oil into a frying pan, drop in the meat, and dust it with herbs.

When he was satisfied that the meat was cooking properly, Treece turned away from the stove and looked at Sanders. “What’s pecking at your shell?”

“What?” Sanders didn’t understand.

“With the shark business. What are you looking for?”

Sanders thought: Oh Christ, here we go again.

“Nothing. It was stupid. I know that.” He hoped his admission would end the conversation.

“I think there’s more,” Treece said. “I think, inside you, you think you did something ballsy.”

Sanders blushed, for Treece was right. Beneath the knowledge that he had acted stupidly, impetuously, dangerously, there was a little-boy’s pride at having stabbed a shark. Though he would not say so, he had even fantasized about how he would shape the story for telling to friends. He said nothing.

“It’s natural enough,” Treece said. “A lot of people want to prove something to themselves, and when they do something they think’s impressive, then they’re impressed themselves. The mistake is, what you do isn’t the same as what you are . You like to do tilings just to see if you can. Right?”

Though there was no reproach in Treece’s voice, Sanders was embarrassed. “Sometimes. I guess…”

“What I’m getting at…” Treece paused. “The feeling’s a lot richer when you do something right, when you know something has to be done and you know what you’re doing, and then you do something hairy. Life’s full of chances to hurt yourself or someone else.” Treece took a drink. “In the next few days, you’ll have more chances to hurt yourself than most men get in a lifetime.