Eyes of Fire

predators.

Darlene listened, wide-eyed.

It was fun to watch Sam with the little girl. Sam was a natural, Adam thought.

“There are dangers everywhere, Darlene.”

“Right,” Brad said. “I mean, houses fall on people. Things fall out of buildings. You can walk down a street and a big truck can hit you, right?”

Adam arched a brow at Brad, then decided that making the water appealing again for Darlene might be better than trying to convince her that she was going to meet a grisly end on solid ground.

“You know, when you become a more advanced diver, Darlene, there are more wrecks to see. There’s an old English ship, a man-of-war, that went down in about one hundred and twenty-five feet of water another hour’s ride out from the Steps.”

“A man-of-war?” Brad said.

“She was called Our Lady of Mercy. She was a ship in the English Navy. She went down in 1813—after a battle with the American ship Tallymar. The English ship was more powerful, but the Tallymar’s guns caught her just right, and down she went. Treasure hunters over the years since have dredged up most of what was of value on her, but she’s a great wreck to dive. You can almost imagine what she was like when she was under sail. Her figurehead is in a museum in Salem, Massachusetts, but one of the cruise ship companies put a copy of it back on her. Say, do you know why they call English sailors, and sometimes just Englishmen, limeys?”

“I didn’t know that they did call them limeys,” Darlene said mournfully.

Adam grinned. “Ships’ doctors back then didn’t understand about vitamin C, but they did realize that men got scurvy when they were kept from fresh fruit and vegetables too long. Limes lasted, and they were easy to purchase in any tropical port. English sailors were frequently given limes, so they became limeys.”

“Yeah, and the officers used to drink like fish, young man!” Liam Hinnerman added. “Water got bad on the ships quickly, turned green with slime. Didn’t matter to the bigwigs in charge if the ordinary seamen drank scum. Those officers, they kept all the liquor around that they could.”

“Sounds smart to me,” Sukee commented.

“Ah, it was a rough life,” Hinnerman continued. He had a look in his eye that said he was going to tell Brad about something bloody. “A British sailor often went to sea for a few square meals, but his meals were filled with weevils and maggots. Know one of the ways they got rid of the maggots that had gotten into their biscuits? They put a dead fish on top of the biscuits. The maggots crawled right for it. They kept putting in dead fish until all the maggots were gone.”

Sam looked at Adam and grimaced.

Darlene was looking a little green again, but Brad was fascinated.

“Being a sailor was hard,” Adam told Darlene. “They could punish men harshly for fairly minor infractions of the rules. One of the things they did was called ‘flogging around the fleet.’ The poor fellow was tied standing in one of the small boats, his back bared, and the boatswain’s mates from his fleet lashed him twenty-four times each. If there were a lot of ships, he could wind up with more than three hundred lashes.”

“He would die!” Darlene protested.

“He often did,” Adam told her. “If he survived, it was said that he had been given a ‘checkered shirt,’ because the lashes on his back crisscrossed in red ribbons and looked like a checked shirt.”

“I’m glad I didn’t live back then.”

“Yeah,” her mother teased, tousling her hair. “Now moms and dads have a bad time giving a kid a spanking! Not that children should be abused….”

“But a good spanking now and then seems in order to me,” Liam Hinnerman said, eyes glittering.

“Want to hear a funny one?” Adam asked Darlene.

“The seamen weren’t allowed to smoke—the fire hazard was too dangerous. They chewed tobacco instead. They were supposed to spit their tobacco into something called a spit kid. When they spat on the deck instead, their punishment was to have the spit kid tied around their necks. Then their shipmates were allowed to use them for a tobacco-spitting target.”

“Ugh. That’s gross!” Darlene said. But she grinned suddenly. “Brad would make a good target.”

“Maybe.”

Sam stood suddenly. She looked tense. “Suit up time,” she said. “We’ve got lots of company today.”

They did have company, Adam saw. At least half a dozen dive boats were anchored around the site, their flags waving. Beautiful weather, Adam thought.

The calm before the storm.

“Everybody buddied up?” Sam asked. Jem had cut the motor on the Sloop Bee, and was dropping the anchor.

“Joey and me forever!” Sue Emerson said happily.

“We expected nothing less,” Sukee murmured.

“I’ve got my honey today,” Liam said, lifting Jerry’s hand. Poor Jerry. She was very pale. Well, maybe she had a right to be. Adam made a mental note to keep a good eye on the pair.

“Thank God!” Jim Santino said, flipping back his hair. “I get a woman today! Sam—”

“I’ve got Darlene,” Sam said.

“There’s me,” Sukee offered dryly.

“So there is!” Jim murmured.

“Mr. O’Connor?” Brad said.

“Fine. You got me, kid.” Good. That made it a foursome—Darlene and Brad, Sam and himself.

He had to find a few minutes to get off on his own. And come tomorrow, he was going to have to get out here alone somehow.

Well, not alone.

With Sam.

“If we’re all buddied up, let’s take the dive. We have lots of time. Don’t forget, though—you especially, my talented new students,” Sam told the kids, smiling, “to always keep an eye on your air and your time. Right?”

“Right. But I’m with you,” Darlene said.

“Still…” Sam began.

“Still, if a big shark came along and ate Sam, you’d want to survive on your own, right?” Liam asked her politely.

“No big shark is coming along,” Adam said evenly. Liam Hinnerman was the kind of man who deserved a hard right to the jaw.

But this wasn’t the time or the place, and Hinnerman could probably also hit back. No matter. One to his kisser would be worth whatever he dished out in return.

“Divers in the water!” Jem called.

Suits on, masks on, fins, vests and cylinders, they entered the water. It was a familiar realm for Adam. A world he loved. Moving slowly, neutralizing the natural squeezes that occurred with the pressure as man moved deeper into the sea. In his work, he’d dived rivers, lakes, creeks, streams and canals, as well as dozens of different places in the ocean. Nothing was so beautiful as the tropical and semi-tropical sea. The reefs with their teeming, multicolored life, sea fans waving, anemones, tubes and more. Brad pointed to an outcropping of fire coral, bloodred, beautiful, painfully dangerous. They enjoyed its beauty and steered clear of it.

Following Sam and Darlene.

Following the Steps.

Twenty feet down, twenty-five feet. The air from their regulators bubbled around them, making a soft, constant sound within the watery world. Thirty feet, thirty-five feet. Forty feet, forty-five. Fifty. Fifty-five.

Sam had stopped at one of the Steps, studying it. Darlene paused with her. Adam pointed out the step to Brad, and they swam toward it. Adam caught Sam’s eyes beneath the glass of her mask. Framed there, a deep beautiful green. Her hair flared out, redder in the water. As red as the fire coral, or so it seemed. He motioned to Brad, drawing her attention to the boy. She frowned, alarmed to realize that he was about to move out on his own.

Alarmed…