gingerly parted the cold slimy foliage. I worked my way down through it and emerged into a relatively open area below. It was a twilight area roofed in by the bamboo and peopled with strange new tribes of fish and marine animals.
I knew at once that it would not be a simple task to search the floor of the pool. Visibility here was ten feet or less, and the total area we must cover was two or three acres in extent.
I decided to bring Sherry down with me and for a start we would make a sweep along the base of the cliff, keeping in line abreast and within sight of each other.
I a-dated my lungs and used the buoyancy to rise from the bottom, out through the thick belt of foliage into the clear.
I did not see Sherry at first, and I felt a quick dart of concern stab me. Then I saw the silver stream of her bubbles rising against the black wall of coral. She had moved away, ignoring my instruction, and I was annoyed. I finned towards her and was twenty feet from her when I saw what she was doing. My annoyance gave way instantly to shock and horror.
The long series of accidents and mishaps that were to haunt us in Gunfire Break had begun.
Growing out of the coral cliff was a lovely fernlike structure, graceful sweeps, branching and rebranching, pale pink shading to crimson.
Sherry had broken off a large branch of it. She held it in her bare hands and even as I raced towards her I saw her legs brush lightly against the red arms of the dreaded fire coral.
I seized her wrists and dragged her off the cruel and beautiful plant. I dug my thumbs into her flesh, shaking her hands viciously, forcing her to drop her fearsome burden. I was frantic in the knowledge that ftorn their cells in the coral branches tens of thousands of minute polyps were firing their barbed poison darts into her flesh.
She was staring at me with great stricken eyes, aware that something bad had happened, but not yet sure what it was. I held her and began the ascent immediately. Even in my anxiety I was careful to obey the elementary rules of ascent, never overtaking my own bubbles but rising steadily with them.
I checked my watch - eight minutes thirty seconds elapsed. That was three minutes at one hundred and thirty feet. Quickly I calculated my decompre sion stops, but I was caught between the devil of diver’s bends and the deep blue sea of Sherry’s coming agony.
It hit her before we were halfway to the surface, her face contorted and her breathing went into the shallow ragged panting of deep distress until I feared she. might beat the mechanical efficiency of her demand valve, jamming it so that it could no longer feed her with air.
She began to writhe in my grip and the palms of her hands blushed angrily, the livid red weals rose like whiplashes across her thighs - and I thanked God for the protection her suit had given to her torso.
When I held her at a decompression stop fifteen feet below the surface she fought me wildly, kicking and twisting in my grip. I cut the stop fine as I dared, and took her to the surface.
The instant our heads broke clear I spat out my mouthpiece and yelled: “Chubby! Quick!”
The whaleboat was fifty yards away, but the motor was ticking over steadily and Chubby spun her on her own tail. The instant she was pointed at us, he gave the con to Angelo and scrambled up into the bows. Coming down on us like a great brown colossus.
“It’s fire coral, Chubby,” I shouted. “She’s hit hard. Get her outv Chubby leaned out and took hold of the webbing harness at the back of her neck and he lifted her bodily from the water; she dangled from his big brown fists like a drowning kitten.
I ditched my scuba set in the water for Angelo to recover, shrugging out of the harness, and when I scrambled over the side, Chubby had laid her on the floorboards and he was leaning over her, folding her in his arms to quieten her struggles and still her moans and sobs of agony.
I found my medical kit under a pile of loose equipment in the bows, and my fingers were clumsy with haste as I heard Sherry’s sobs behind me. I snapped the head of an ampoule of morphine and filled a disposable syringe with the clear fluid. Now I was angry as well as concerned.
“You stupid broad,” I snarled at her. “What made you do a crazy, half-witted thing like that?”
She could not answer me, her lips were shaking and blue, flecked with spittle. I took a pinch of skin on her thigh and thrust the needle into it as I expelled the fluid into her flesh. I went on angrily.
“Fire coral - my God, you aren’t an erring conchologist’s backside. Isn’t a kid on the island that stupid.”
“I didn’t think, Harry,” she panted wildly.
“Didn’t think-” I repeated, her pain was goading me to new excesses of anger. “I don’t think you’ve got anything in your head to think with, you stupid little birdbrain.”
I withdrew the needle, and ransacked the medicine box for the anti-histamine spray.
“I should put you over my knee, you-” Chubby looked up at me.
“Harry, you talk to Miss. Sherry just one more word like that and, man - I’m going to have to break your head, hear?”
With only mild surprise I realized that he meant it. I had seen him break heads before, and knew it was something to avoid, so I told him, “Instead of making speeches how about you get us the hell out of here and back to the island.”
you just treat her gentle, man, otherwise I’m going to roast your arse so you wish you’d been the one that sat on a bunch of fire coral instead of her, hear?”
I ignored this mutinous outburst and sprayed the ugly scarlet weals, coating them with a protective and soothing skin, and then I lifted her into my arms and held her like that while the morphine smoothed out the fearful burning agony of the stings and Chubby ran us back to the island.
When I carried Sherry up to the cave she was already half comatose from the drug. All that night I stayed by her side, helping her through the shivering and sweating fever produced by the virulent poison. Once she moaned and whispered half, in delirium, “I’m sorry, Harry. I didn’t know. It’s the first time I’ve dived in coral water. I didn’t recognize it.”
Chubby and Angelo did not sleep either. I heard the murmur of their voices from the fireside and every hour one of them would cough outside the cave entrance and then inquire anxiously: “How’s she doing, Harry?”
By the morning Sherry had fought off the worst effects of the poisoning, and the stings had subsided into an ugly rash of blisters. However, it was another thirty-six hours before any of us could raise the enthusiasm to tackle the pool again, then the tides were wrong. We had to wait another day.
The precious hours were slipping away. I could imagine the Mandrake making fair passage, she had looked a fast and powerful vessel and each day wasted whittled away the lead I had counted upon.
On the third day, we ran out again to the pool. It was midafternoon and we took a chance with the water in the channel, scraping through early in the flood with inches to spare over the sharp coral snags.
Sherry was still in mild disgrace and, with her hands wrapped in acriflavine bandages, she was left in the whaleboat to keep Angelo company. Chubby and I dived together, going down fast and pausing above the swaying bamboo tops only long enough to drop the first marker buoy. I had decided it was necessary to search the pool bottom systematically. I was marking off the whole area into squares, anchoring inflatable buoys above the marine forest on thin nylon line.
We worked for an hour and found nothing that was obviously wreckage, although there were masses of coral covered with marine growth that would bear closer investigation. I marked these on the underwater slate attached to my thigh.
At the end of that hour, our air reserves in the double ninety-cubic-foot bottles were uncomfortably low. Chubby used more air than I did, for he was a much bigger man and his technique lacked finesse, so I regularly checked his pressure gauge.
I took him up and was especially careful on the decompression periods, although Chubby showed his usual impatience. He had never seen as I had, a diver come up too fast so the blood in his veins starts fizzing like champagne. The resultant agonies can cripple a man and an air bubble lodged in the brain can do permanent damage.
“Any luck?” Sherry called as soon as we surfaced, and I gave her the thumbs down as we swam to the whaleboat. We drank a cup of coffee from the thermos and I smoked an island cheroot while we rested and chatted. I think we were all mildly disappointed that success had not been immediate, but I kept their spirits up by anticipating the first find.
Chubby and I changed our demand valves on to freshly charged bottles and down we went again. This time I
