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.

Dar approached, lifting her dive computer and displaying the time they had remaining. Kerry nodded, then pointed with her light, catching the flash again. They both swam closer, peering under the collapsed ribs and time deteriorated cases piled on the bottom, resting against what had once been the side of the ship.

Dar tried to edge closer on one side, but her bulk kept her from getting any nearer. Frowning, she motioned Kerry over, but even Kerry’s smaller form was too wide to fit through with her tank on.

Dar considered a moment, then she turned Kerry around and unclasped her tank from her BC, holding it in one hand and moving it to one side.

Kerry grasped the spar and pulled herself down, now just able to get between the wood and the side of the ship. She could see the shining something, and as she squiggled closer and her motion brushed a collection of algae off it, it resolved itself into a flat surface. She felt Dar’s hand on her hip in a reassuring pat, and she edged a little further, now able to put her hand on whatever it was.

She just about panicked when an eel suddenly erupted from around the object, squirming right past her neck toward Dar and giving her a lash with its tail on the way out. A muffled burst of noise came from Kerry’s throat, sending a stream of bubbles upward, but after a jerk behind her as Dar got out of the eel’s way, the comforting pat returned.

Jesus. Kerry flexed her hand and reached a little further, getting her fingers around the surface and tugging. It resisted her pull but 38 Melissa Good she persisted, and with the faintest crackling as she freed it from the growing coral, it came loose and she brought it closer to her mask.

It was a box. The shine had been the hammered metal insignia which covered it, though corrosion had mostly obscured the design.

Kerry started backwards, glad for the grip on her belt that was guiding her out of the tight spot. Dar peered over her shoulder as she reattached Kerry’s tank, and they both gazed curiously at her find.

A buried treasure. Kerry blinked delightedly. Even if it was, as it appeared to be, just an old box, still—the box held history, and it fascinated her. She clutched it tightly as they made their way out of the hold and into the open sea, which seemed brilliantly lit by sunlight now that they were out of the darkness of the ship.

Dar gave her a big thumbs up and Kerry returned it, grinning around her regulator. They leisurely made their way back to the anchor line, carried now by the drift current going in the opposite direction. Kerry tucked her treasure away in her BC pocket as she gripped the line, ready to just watch the show around her as they slowly made their way out of one world, and back to their own.

”WHOO.” KERRY RUFFLED her hair dry with a towel and padded across the deck. “Dar, that was awesome.”

Dar looked up from the basin, at the bottom of which rested their little prize. She studied Kerry’s face, a smile on her own responding to the honest delight she saw there. “Yeah, it was, wasn’t it?”

Kerry applied the towel to her lover’s body, drying the droplets of seawater off it. “That eel scared the poo out of me, though. Did it hit you on its way out?”

“Right in the mask, yeah.” Dar chuckled. “Bounced off me and just kept going. He was a big one.” She glanced up as the sound of far off engines disturbed the otherwise peaceful air, and watched as a small tender approached, slowing when they came even, very obviously giving them the once over.

Kerry peered over Dar’s shoulder. “What’s that all about?” she queried. “We’ve got the dive flag out. Is there a problem with that here?”

“Nah.” Dar frowned. “There’s a thousand old wrecks like this around these islands. That’s just an old island freighter. Some of the historic wrecks have no-dive zones, but not this area.”