Melissa Good - Terrors of the High Seas

Kerry ruffled Dar’s hair. “All this pretty scenery, and you have to draw me?”

“All those pretty fish, and you have to take my picture?” Dar countered drolly, wrapping one arm around Kerry’s leg. “We’ll be at the dive site in an hour. You up for that, or do you want to give it a miss and just go to dinner?”

Kerry leaned against the captain’s chair and let her head rest on Dar’s shoulder. “Does my utter laziness show that badly?” she complained. “I fell asleep twice down there in the chair. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“We’re on vacation. You’re supposed to be lazy,” Dar stated, her eyes scanning the horizon again. “We can go straight in.”

Kerry chewed her lower lip, then shook her head. “No. I’m going to go make some coffee. I really want to see that old wreck, Dar. You made it sound really cool.” She straightened up and put her hands on Dar’s shoulders, massaging them lightly. “Let’s go for it.”

Dar relaxed, enjoying the strong kneading. “You sure?”

“Positive.” Kerry gave her a kiss on the back of the neck. “Take me to the galleon, Cap’n Dar.”

Terrors of the High Seas 35

“Aye, aye, matey,” Dar replied promptly. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll find us some pieces of eight.”

Kerry chuckled, resuming her position draped over Dar’s shoulders. “With our luck, all we’ll find is jellyfish or a cranky moray eel.”

“Or a pile of tin cans.”

They both laughed, a sound muffled by the spray of the boat’s wake to either side of them.

KERRY ADJUSTED HER mask, holding her hand over it and her regulator as she stepped to the back of the boat and paused, then took a big step off and plunged into the water.

It was always a bit of a shock—going from the light and breezy air into the dense, blue water. She sucked in her first breath off her tank, feeling her body adjust as the familiar above-water weight of herself and her equipment moderated in the water’s buoyancy.

While she waited for Dar, Kerry held on to the anchor rope with one hand and tightened the straps on her BC with the other.

Her ears popped, and she gently pinched her nose closed and blew out a little, equalizing the pressure in her middle ears. Just then, the water was disrupted by Dar’s entrance, her tall figure in a whirl of bubbles that cleared as she made her way over to where Kerry was waiting.

Dar’s eyes flicked over her, Kerry noticed, checking her gear out of endearing habit. She endured the scrutiny, and in return she snugged Dar’s tank a little tighter and pulled her hair out from under her BC. Dar winked at her and pointed down, and Kerry nodded.

They started down the anchor rope, descending slowly through the water toward the ocean floor sixty feet below. Diving deep was different than reef diving, Kerry had discovered. You encountered a lot of sensations you didn’t get in the shallows, like thermoclines—

layers of colder water that crept up and enveloped you unexpectedly as you descended, and the awareness of the sea pressure slowly growing against you. Breathing was just a little tougher, and the sense of being a part of the ocean was greater down there since you tended to look down more than up, and the surface was much further away.

They reached the bottom, a patch of soft, creamy white sand that had a few sparse stalks of seaweed poking up through it. Dar checked her dive computer, then motioned Kerry to follow her and started off.

Kerry obliged, staying to one side, out of the draft of Dar’s fins.

Her partner’s leg kicks were a little slower than her own, but more powerful, and Kerry put some effort into keeping up against the 36 Melissa Good light current. They approached a rock escarpment, and as they did, Dar half turned and made a motion near her mask, as though she were snapping a picture. Understanding that a photo op was about to be encountered, Kerry unclipped her camera and adjusted it, then swam after Dar as they crested the escarpment and could look over it.

Wow . Kerry’s eyes widened and she quickly focused on the scene. Forty feet below them was a valley of white sand, and half buried in the sand were the reef-encrusted remains of an old wooden ship. The visibility was incredible, even at this distance, and she kept snapping as they descended toward it.

Schools of fish darted amongst what was left of half broken spars, and one entire side of the front of the ship was gone, leaving a huge hole big enough to admit the largest of the fish swimming around it. Kerry clipped her camera to her vest and just enjoyed the moment, stretching out her arms and releasing some of her buoyancy. She fell through the water in a glide very much like slow motion flying, twisting her body to change angles as she approached the wreck.

Bits of the ship were strewn across the bottom, where they’d scattered when she went down or in the storms afterward. Kerry spotted lumps of metal and she swam over to investigate, reaching out with a gloved hand to touch metal links half the length of her arm. Anchor chain , she realized.

She left the chain and headed toward the tilted, coral-encrusted deck, surprising a school of grouper that scattered when she drifted over them. A grumpy looking barracuda remained, however, glaring at her from between a hatch and a piece of collapsed spar.

Kerry slowly lifted her camera and drifted down to eye level with the denizen of the deep, focusing on the fish’s intimidating jaw. She snapped the shutter, then moved away, watching the ’cuda watch her as she entered a school of angel fish.

They poured over her and she rotated onto her back, looking up at them outlined against the surface like a far off mirror above her. Then she inhaled in surprise as a small squid jetted by, almost within her grasp, its tentacles trailing behind it and brushing her arm.

This sensation of floating in an alien world was still so amazing to her, even after a year. She twisted and looked around, finding Dar floating nearby, her hands clasped on her stomach and her fins crossed as she watched. Kerry grinned and gave her a thumbs up.

Dar grinned back, then pointed toward the hole in the side of the ship and raised her eyebrows in question, visible even over her mask.

Ah! A new adventure . Kerry nodded, following readily as Dar, her underwater lamp clasped in one hand, led the way toward the Terrors of the High Seas 37

interior of the boat. As they reached it, Dar turned on the light and edged inside, carefully examining the space before she proceeded, motioning Kerry after her.

Before she followed Dar inside the ship, Kerry did a quick check of her BC to make sure all her hoses were tucked into their holders and nothing was dangling. She pulled out her own light and turned it on, illuminating a ghostly world of algae-incrusted wood. The structure inside was heavily damaged, but her imagination was able to fill in the missing pieces.

She could envision the sailors who’d lived there, and the cargo they carried across the warm basin of the Caribbean. Long ago, this ship had held dreams. Now all that remained were ghosts, and the flash of odd eyes as her flashlight skimmed over the interior. For a fleeting moment, the thought occurred to her that the eyes belonged to those lost souls who went down with the ship, still there after all these years. Then a lobster scuttled by her, waving its claws menacingly, and Kerry jumped, almost cracking her head against the wood above her. Okay , she told her imagination sternly, save it for topside . With a shake of her head, she drifted down toward the bottom of the hold. Tiny fish swirled around her curiously and as her light reflected off something unidentifiable, she peered closer.