Peter Benchley - The Deep

Gail’s throat was dry, and she said, “Could I have a glass of water?”

“If I can find a glass,” Treece said, rummaging around in the clutter on a counter.

Gail saw a half-full glass on the table.

“This’ll be fine,” she said, and she reached for the glass. “It doesn’t have to be cold.”

Treece watched her, waiting until the glass was within an inch or two of her mouth. Then he laughed and said, “Jesus, girl, don’t drink that stuff. One sip and you’ll be in the history books.”

Gail was startled. “What is it?”

“Hydrochloric acid. Clean your pipes out, that’s for certain.” He found a glass, filled it with tap water, and handed it to her. “Here. All this’ll do is rust you.”

Sanders heard a growl behind him. He turned, not knowing what to expect, and saw a dog sitting on the window sill. It was a terrier of some kind, medium-size, its muzzle grizzled, and it snarled at Sanders.

Treece said, “It’s all right, Charlotte, you dumb bitch.”

The dog’s eyes did not move from Sanders. She growled again.

“I said it’s all right!” Treece grabbed the glass from Gail and flung the water in the dog’s face. The dog wagged her tail and licked the water from her whiskers. “You be nice. They’re not tourists. At least, not now.”

The dog jumped down from the window sill and sniffed around Sanders’ pants.

“She’s feeling pissy because you got in here without her seeing you,” Treece said. “She likes to get her licks in first.”

“Does she really bite?” Gail asked, as the dog’s cold nose explored Sanders’ ankle.

“I guess so! She’s purebred tourist hound.”

Treece leaned against the wall and said, “What do you know about Goliath ?”

“Nothing, really,” Gail said.

“Maybe one thing,” said Sanders. “The lifeguard on the beach said he had heard she was carrying ammunition.”

“Aye,” said Treece. “That, too. Goliath was a cargo vessel, a wooden sailing ship carrying supplies to Europe during World War II. There was a sound purpose to using wooden ships, slow as they were. The hull wouldn’t attract magnetic mines, and, under sail, she made no screw noise for U-boats to home on. Goliath was loaded. Her manifest listed a boodle of munitions and medical supplies. She went down in the fall of 1943, broke her back on the rocks, and dumped her guts all over the place.

For weeks, folks gathered every Christ kind of crap you ever saw off the beach. I went down on her two-three times in the fifties and hauled a ton of brass off her-depth charges and artillery shells.

There were radios all over the bottom. You never saw anything like it. But nobody ever found those medical supplies.”

“What were they supposed to be?” asked Gail.

“Nobody knows for sure. The manifest said medical supplies, period. It could have been anything-sulfa, bandages, iodine, chloroform-anything. A couple of years after the war, though, forty-seven I think it was, a bloody great hurricane beat it all to rubble. Most people forgot about Goliath after that, but some didn’t.”

Sanders said, “The bell captain told us there was a survivor.”

“Aye, one. He was damn near in worse shape than the wreck, but he lived. For a time after he got out of hospital he sold scraps from Goliath , and for drinks he’d tell tales of the wreck. One night, he was in his cups and he spun a web about a fortune in drugs aboard Goliath .

Thousands and thousands of ampules of morphine and opium, he said, carried in cigar boxes. He claimed to have been personally responsible for them, said he knew where they were but he’d tell no man. A day later he was waylaid and thrashed by people wanting to know more about the drugs. He swore he’d forgotten what he’d said, claimed he didn’t know anything about any drugs. He never told that story again. But once was enough. Rumor spread, and before long the rumor was that there were ten million dollars in drugs down there. People looked—Jesus, they did a bloody autopsy on the wreck with everything save tweezers-but they never found a single ampule. Not till now.”

“Why would one turn up now?” Sanders asked.

“The bottom of the sea is a living creature.

She’s whimsical, the sea, a tease. She loves to fool you. She changes all the time. A storm can alter her face; a change in current can cause her to heave her insides out. You can dive on a wreck one day and find nothing. The wind blows that night, and the next day, in the same spot, you find a carpet of gold coins. That’s happened. And we’ve had four juicy blowups in the past six weeks.”

Gail said, “David thought this ampule could have come from the sick bay.”

“ Goliath didn’t have a sick bay. They likely carried some medicine for the crew, and if this were any other ship, I’d write the ampule off as from the medicine chest.

But not this one. The best hope is that you found the one and only ampule left.”

“Why?” asked Sanders.

“Because there are people who’d slit your throat for a fraction of what the rumors say is down there. How much did you tell that fellow last night?”

“Nothing. We didn’t know anything, except that we found the ampule in the general area of Goliath .”

Treece looked out the window. Finally he said, “Would you be willing to take another plunge, have another look? Not today. The sea’d turn a diver to hash. But tomorrow?”

Sanders looked at Gail. “Sure.”

“It’s important to know if there’s anything more down there. If there isn’t, fine. But if there is, I’ll want to get it up before every hophead between here and the Bahamas finds out about it and starts diving for a cheap charge. I’d go myself, but that would be like running a flag up a pole.” Treece began to search through some cabinets. “Any time I get my feet wet, the papers start trumpeting about treasure. And now that someone knows there may be something on Goliath , for me to go down would be a dead giveaway.” He reached deep into the back of a cabinet and brought out two fist-size rocks, which he put on the table.

“If you come across another ampule, set one of these on the spot. The shiny chips are infrared reflectors. I’ll go down of a night with an infrared torch and poke around.”

“Okay,” said Sanders. “We’ll go tomorrow.”

“If the wind behaves.”

Gail stood up, and as she lifted her bundle from the table, she noticed the black lump David had found. She pointed at it and said to Treece, “Is that coal?”

“No.” Treece picked up the lump. “It’s a sulfide of some kind. I can look inside for you, but there’s a risk of ruining it.”

“That’s okay.”

Treece took a hammer and chisel from the counter, sat down at the table, and set the black lump in front of him. The hammer looked like a toy in his huge, scarred hand; his thumbnail was as big as the face of the hammer head. But he used the tools as gently and deftly as a gem-cutter. He probed the lump, chipping here and there, found a hairline crack near the center, and lined the chisel blade on the crack. He banged the chisel once, and the lump fell apart in two pieces. Examining the two halves, he smiled. “It’s a nice one. Can’t quite read the date, but otherwise, it’s a dandy.”

“What is it?” said Sanders.

“The bones of a piece of eight, ancestor of the bloody dollar.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look.” Treece held the two halves of the lump to the light. In the black mass, Sanders saw the faint imprint of a cross, a castle, and a rampant lion. “That was once a silver coin. When it hit the briny, it began to oxidize.