smallest was three hundred pounds. Could have took more - but time was up. You can’t stay in Gunfire Break more than an hour after high water - she sucks out through the Break like they pulled the chain on the whole damned sea. You come out the same way you went in, only you pray just a little harder on the way out —,“cos you got a ton of fish on board, and ten feet less water under your keel. There is another way out through a channel in the back of the reef But I don’t even like to talk about that one. Only tried it once.”
Now we were bearing down directly on the Break, Jimmy was going to run us right into the eye of it.
“Okay, Jim,” I called. “That’s as far as we go.” I opened the throttle and sheered off, making a good offing before turning back to face Jimmy’s wrath.
“We were almost there, damn you,” he blustered. “We could have gone in a little closer.”
“You having trouble up there, boy?” Guthrie shouted up from the cockpit.
“No, it’s all right,” Jimmy called back, and then turned furiously to me. “You are under contract, Mr. Fletcher!
“I want to show you something, James, and I took him to the chart table. The Break was marked on the admiralty chart by a single laconic sounding of thirty fathoms, there was no name or sailing instruction for it. Quickly I pencilled in the bearings of the two extreme peaks of the Old Men from the break, and then used the protractor to measure the angle they subtended.
“That right?” I asked him, and he stared at my figures.
“It’s right, isn’t it?” I insisted and then reluctantly he nodded.. ”
“Yes, that’s the spot,” he agreed, and I went on to tell him about Gunfire Break in every detail.
“But we have to get in there,” he said at the end of my speech, as though he had not heard a word of it.
“No way,” I told him. “The only place I’m interested in now is Grand Harbour, St. Mary’s Island,” and I laid Dancer on that course. As far as I was concerned the charter was over.
Jimmy disappeared down the ladder, and returned within minutes with reinforcements - Materson and Guthrie, both of them looking angry and outraged.
“Say the word, and I’ll tear the bastard’s arm off and beat him to death with the wet end,” Mike Guthrie said with relish.
“The kid says you pulling out?” Materson wanted to know. “Now that’s not right - is it?” I explained once more about the hazards of Gunfire Break and they sobered immediately.
“Take me close as you can - I’ll swim in the rest of the way,” Jimmy asked me, but I replied directly to Materson. “You’d lose him, for certain sure. Do you want to risk that?”
He didn’t answer, but I could see that Jimmy was much too valuable for them to take the chance.
“Let me try,” Jimmy insisted, but Materson shook his head irritably.
“If we can’t get into the Break, at least let me take a run along the reef with the sledge,” Jimmy went on, and I knew then what we were carrying under the canvas wrapping on the foredeck.
“Just a couple of passes” along the front edge of the reef, past the entrance to the break.” He was pleading now, and Materson looked questioningly at me. You don’t often have opportunities like this offered you on a silver tray. I knew I could run Dancer within spitting distance of the coral without risk, but I frowned worriedly.
“I’d be taking a hell of a chance - but if we could agree on a bit of old danger money” I had Materson over the arm of the chair and I caned him for an extra day’s hire - five hundred dollars, payable in advance.
While we did the business, Guthrie helped Jimmy unwrap the sledge and carry it back to the cockpit.
I tucked the sheath of bank notes away and went back to rig the tow lines. The sledge was a beautifully constructed toboggan of stainless steel and plastic. In place of snow runners, it had stubby fin controls, rudder and hydrofoils, operated by a short joystick below the Perspex pilot’s shield.
There was a ring bolt in the nose to take the tow line by which I would drag the sledge in Dancer’s wake. Jimmy would lie on his belly behind the transparent shield, breathing compressed air from the twin tanks that were built into the chassis of the sledge. On the dashboard were depth and pressure gauges, directional compass and time elapse clock. With the joystick Jimmy could control the depth of the sledge’s dive, and yaw left or right across Dancer’s stern.
“Lovely piece of work,” I remarked, and he flushed with pleasure.
“Thanks, skipper, built it myself.” He was pulling on the wet suit of thick black Neoprene rubber and while his head was in the clinging hood I stooped and examined the maker’s plate that was riveted to the sledge’s chassis, memorizing the legend.
Built by North’s Underwater World.
5, Pavilion Arcade. BRIGHTON. SUSSEX.
I straightened up as his face appeared in the opening of the hood.
“Five knots is a good tow speed, skipper. If you keep a hundred yards off the reef, I’ll be able to deflect outwards and follow the contour of the coral.”
“Fine, Jim.”
“If I put up a yellow marker, ignore it, it’s only a find, and we will go back to it later - but if I send up a red, it’s trouble, try and get me off the reef and haul me in.” I nodded. “You have three hours,” I warned him. “Then she will begin the ebb up through the break and we’ll have to haul off.”
“That should be long enough,” he agreed.
Guthrie and I lifted the sledge over the side, and it wallowed low in the water. Jimmy clambered down to it and settled himself behind the screen, testing the controls, adjusting his faceplate and cramming the mouthpiece of the breathing device into his mouth. He breathed noisily and then gave me the thumbs up.
I climbed quickly to the bridge and opened the throttles. Dancer picked up speed and Guthrie paid out the thick nylon rope over the stern as the sledge fell away behind us. One hundred and fifty yards of rope went over, before the sledge jerked up and began to tow.
Jimmy waved, and I pushed Dancer up to a steady five knots. I circled wide, then edged in towards the reef, taking the big swells on Dancer’s beam so she rolled appallingly.
Again Jimmy waved, and I saw him push the control column of the sledge forwards. There was a turmoil of white water along her control fins and then suddenly she put her nose down and ducked below the surface. The angle of the nylon rope altered rapidly as the sledge went down, and then swung away towards the reef.
The strain on the rope made it quiver like an arrow as it strikes, and the water squirted from the fibres.
Slowly we ran parallel to the reef, closing the break. I watched the coral respectfully, taking no chances, and I imagined Jimmy far below the surface flying silently along the bottom, cutting in to skim the tall wall of underwater coral. It must have been an exhilarating sensation, and I envied him, deciding to hitch a ride on the sledge when I got the opportunity.
We came opposite the Break, passed it and just then I heard Guthrie shout. I glanced quickly over the stern and saw the big yellow balloon bobbing in our wake.
“He found something,” Guthrie shouted.
Jimmy had dropped a light leaded line, and a sparkler bulb had automatically inflated the yellow balloon with carbon dioxide gas to mark the spot.
I kept going steadily along the reef, and a quarter of a mile farther the angle of the tow line flattened and the sledge popped to the surface in a welter of water.
I swung away from the reef to a safe distance, and then went down to help Guthrie recover the sledge. Jimmy clambered into the cockpit, and when he pulled off his faceplate his lips were trembling and his grey eyes blazed. He took Materson’s arm and dragged him into the cabin, splashing sea water all over Chubby’s beloved deck..
Guthrie and I coiled the rope then lifted the sledge into the cockpit. I went back to the bridge, and took Dancer on a slow return to the entrance of Gunfire Break.
Materson and Jimmy came up on to the bridge before we reached it.
Materson was affected by Jimmy’s excitement. “The kid wants to try for a pick up.” I knew better than to ask what it was.
“What size?” I asked instead, and glanced at my wristwatch. We had an hour and a half before the rip tide began to run out through the break.
Not very big-” Jimmy assured me. “Fifty pounds maximum.”
“You sure, James? Not bigger?” I didn’t trust his enthusiasm not to minimize the effort involved.
“I swear it.”
