Gordon Korman - The Deep

A medical team was waiting for them at touchdown. Kaz joined the stampede with the stretcher. An elevator took them into the guts of the platform, where the infirmary was located.

The double doors were marked RECOMPRESSION THERAPY. A dour-faced, lab-coated technician barred their way.

“She can’t come in here. I’ve got hard-hat divers in the water. What if one of them needs — ”

Before the man could finish, Bobby Kaczinski, the most promising young defenseman in the Ontario Minor Hockey Association, did what he had been trained to do his entire life. Without slowing his pace, he lowered his shoulder and delivered a crunching body check that put the technician flat on his back.

The decompression chamber looked like a huge high-tech steel pipe about the size of a Dumpster.

Kaz got out of the way as the medical team worked on Star. She was hooked up to various monitors, and an IV drip was started. The oxygen was discontinued, and adrenaline administered.

This isn’t happening… this isn’t Star… this isn’t our summer….

The heavy door swung shut, rubber gaskets muffling the clang of metal on metal. The hyperbaric chamber pressed Star and a nurse down to seven atmospheres — the same pressure as 228 feet. According to the dive computer in Star’s watch, that was the maximum depth of her unplanned adventure. Over the next several hours, that pressure would be slowly reduced, giving her system a chance to expel the nitrogen that was overwhelming her body.

But was the damage already done? It had taken half an hour to get her into the chamber. Thirty minutes of deadly bubbles foaming her blood.

He looked to the chief doctor, but the man’s face revealed no clue as to how the treatment was proceeding.

This is what we get for trespassing on the graves of sailors who’ve been dead for three hundred years.

First the captain, and now Star. It was too much to bear.

Two hours later, when Adriana and Dante rushed into the infirmary, the doctor’s expression had not changed.

“She’s okay, right?” Dante asked eagerly. “Is she okay?”

Kaz just shook his head and directed their attention to the chamber’s window. There lay their friend, her face chalk-white, still unconscious.

The double doors swung wide to reveal Menasce Gérard, terrible in his anger and grief.

“This is true, this thing I hear?” he demanded, voice booming. “The captain?”

“He’s dead,” Adriana confirmed in a husky whisper. “Star tried to save him and she — ”

The big dive guide strode to the window in the chamber. His fury softened at the sight of Star, and he placed a hand against the glass, as if trying to project his strength across the space between them. Then he wheeled and faced down the other three.

“ Alors — here is your treasure! Are you happy now? Do you feel rich?”

They could not argue, nor defend themselves.

They could only wait.

The Griffin under full sail was a majestic sight. She was a barque, three-masted, carrying twenty-four guns, and built low to the water, much different from the workhorses of the Spanish treasure fleet. The galleons were massive, with towering decks. Loaded down with their precious cargoes, they wallowed in the sea, sitting ducks for the faster, more maneuverable ships of the great naval powers — England, France, Holland. And, of course, the pirates and corsairs.

That was why Captain Blade was not overly concerned about the four-day head start the Spaniards had on the privateer fleet.

“We’ll overtake them, we will!” Samuel heard him boast to his officers. Under torture, the mayor of Portobelo had revealed the route the fleet would be following back to Spain. There would be no usual stop in Havana. Instead, the galleons would veer to the south, picking their way through the notorious Hidden Shoals.

As the privateer fleet navigated this course, Captain Blade ringed his vessel with lookouts and placed dozens of men in the highest rigging to scan the horizon for sails. Even when the skies darkened four days later and the rains came, he would not allow them to abandon their posts.

The next morning, with eighteen-foot waves crashing over the bowsprit, gunner’s mate Blankenship was hurled from the mizzenmast as the barque heeled in the violent seas.

Even York felt the need to plead with the captain for the safety of the crew. “Sir, the ratlines are not fit for man nor beast with the sea in this condition! We’ve lost one already!”

“And we’ll lose many more,” Blade predicted. “That’s what the scum are for. Better to lose a few hands than the Spanish fleet!”

Samuel, who was cleaning up the captain’s breakfast dishes and stumbling on the unsteady deck, exclaimed, “But sir — ”

York silenced him with a sharp slap across the mouth.

It stung, but Samuel realized the barber had just done him a favor. For if the man had given Blade a chance to deliver the blow himself, it surely would have come from the bone-handled snake whip.

“Captain,” York persisted, “what might a lookout spy in such weather? Do you not know the size and nature of this storm?”

“That I do,” agreed Blade. “’Tis a monster gale stretching a hundred miles in all directions around a pinhole of clear blue sky. Aye, that’s the beauty part.”

Samuel could not contain himself. “Beauty? Such storms destroy ships, with all hands lost!”

“Perchance they do,” Blade acknowledged. “But if we’re in it, so are the Spaniards.” He emitted a diabolical cackle. “Die we might, boy. But if we live, by God, we’ll all be filthy rich!”

GORDON KORMAN is the author of more than forty books for children and young adults, including the Island series and the Everest series, as well as The Chicken Doesn’t Skate , the Slapshots series, and Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire . He lives on Long Island with his wife and children.

Copyright © 2003 by Gordon Korman.

All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.

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First printing, July 2003

Photography: Kelly La Duke

Cover design: Ursula S. Albano

eISBN 978-0-545-62812-9

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