With Summer in the lead, they dropped out of the entry lock, checked each other's equipment and then moved into the sea that was as black as deep space. Together, they switched on their dive lights and startled the nearby night fish who had emerged after dark to feed in their coral domain. Above, there was no moon to sweep the surface with shimmering silver. The stars were cloaked by ominous clouds, the precursors of the vicious storm soon to come.
Dirk stroked his fins behind his sister, following her into the dark void. He knew she enjoyed the underwater world by her graceful, languid movements. Her bubbles rose in clusters of balloons indicating the comfortable breathing of an expert diver. She looked back at him through her mask and smiled. Then she pointed to her right and kicked off over the coral illuminated by her dive light in a maze of muted colors.
There was nothing sinister about the silent sea beneath the surface at night. Curious fish were attracted by the dive lights and came out of their coral hiding places to study the unfamiliar and awkward swimming creatures intruding in their midst who were carrying sealed housings that beamed like the sun. A huge parrot fish swam at Dirk's side, staring at him like a curious cat. Six four-foot barracudas materialized out of the gloom, their lower jaws protruding beyond their noses and displaying rows of needle-sharp teeth. They ignored the divers and glided past without the slightest sign of interest.
Summer finned through the coral canyons as if she was following a road map. A little blowfish, startled by the glare of the light, puffed its body into a round ball with spikes protruding from its sides like a cactus, making it impossible or extremely unlikely a big predator would be dumb enough to attempt to swallow such a throat-ripping morsel.
Their lights threw eerie, flickering shadows against the distorted coral whose surface varied from jagged sharpness to round and globular. To Dirk, the complex hues and shapes took on the look of a continuous abstract painting. He glanced at his depth gauge. It read forty-five feet. He glanced ahead as Summer suddenly dropped down into a narrow coral canyon with steep sides. He descended in her wake, noticing a number of openings in the coral leading to shallow caves and wondering which one had attracted her the day before.
Finally, she hesitated before a vertical opening with squared corners sandwiched between a pair of unnatural-looking columns. Turning briefly to see that her brother was still following, Summer swam unhesitatingly into the cavern beyond. This time, with a dive light in hand and the security of her brother beside her, Summer penetrated deeper into the cavern, past the place in the bottom sand where she had discovered the urn.
The cave was not crooked or irregular. The walls, ceiling and floor were almost perfectly flat, stretching into the darkness like a corridor without twists and turns. Deeper and deeper it led them on.
Becoming lost in a cave system is the number one cause of cave-diving fatalities. Mistakes prove deadly. Here, fortunately, there was no problem of orientation. This was not a dangerous cave dive, nor was there a fear of becoming lost in a complex system of adjoining caves. The chamber had no side openings or separate shafts that could cause them to lose their way. To regain the entrance, they had only to reverse their course. They were thankful there was no fine silt on the bottom that when disturbed could cloud vision for an hour before it settled again. The floor of the coral shaft was covered with coarse sand too heavy to swirl in the water if disturbed by their fins.
Abruptly, the shaft ended in what teased Summer's imagination. Though infested with marine growth, it seemed as if the shaft rose with a flight of steps. A school of angelfish twirled in a corkscrew above her head, then darted past as she began to ascend. Her skin and the nape of her neck suddenly tingled with expectation. Her earlier feeling that there was more to the cavern than met the eye came back with a rush.
The coral thinned this far under the reef. With no light to encourage marine growth the encrustation on the walls of the shaft was less than an inch thick and consisted more of slimy growth than hard coral. Dirk took his gloved hand and brushed away the greasy coating and felt his heart quicken as he recognized grooves in granite rock that he theorized were put there by ancient hands when the sea was lower.
Then, through the water, he heard Summer utter a distorted squeal. He kicked upward and was stunned when he broke the surface of the water into an air pocket. He looked up as Summer's light swept over a domed ceiling of seemingly chiseled stones fit tightly together without mortar.
'What have we got here?' Dirk spoke through his underwater communications system.
'It's either a freak of nature or an ancient man-made vault,' Summer murmured in awe.
'This is no freak of nature.'
'It must have been submerged after the melting of the Ice Age.'
'That was ten thousand years ago. Impossible to be that ancient. More likely, the vault sank during an earthquake like the one that struck Port Royal, Jamaica, the pirate haven that slipped into the sea after a massive tremor in sixteen ninety-two.'
'Could it be a forgotten ghost city?' asked Summer, her excitement mounting.
Dirk shook his head. 'Unless there is much more buried under the surrounding coral, my gut instinct is this was some sort of temple.'
'Built by ancient natives of the Caribbean?'
'I doubt it. Archaeologists have found no evidence of stone masonry in the West Indies before Columbus. And the local natives certainly didn't know how to forge a bronze urn. This was built by a different culture, a lost and unknown civilization.'
'Not another Atlantis myth,' Summer said sarcastically.
'No, Dad and Al put that to rest in the Antarctic several years ago.'
'Seems incredible that ancient peoples of Europe sailed across the ocean and built a temple on a coral reef.'
Dirk slowly ran his gloved hand on one wall. 'Navidad Reef was probably an island back then.'
'When you think about it,' said Summer, 'we must be breathing air thousands of years old.'
Dirk deeply inhaled and then exhaled. 'Smells and tastes good to me.'
Summer pointed over her shoulder. 'Help me with the camera. We must get a photo record.'
Dirk moved behind her and removed an aluminum carrying case attached to a clip beneath her air tanks. He pulled out a minidigital Sony PC-100 camcorder mounted inside a compact Ikelite clear-acrylic housing. Setting the controls on manual mode, he attached the arms for the floodlights. Since there was no ambient light there was no need for a light meter.
There was an illusive grandeur to the submarine chamber and Summer was more than proficient enough with a camera to capture it. The instant she flicked on the floodlights the bleak cave came alive in a montage of green, yellow, red and purple hues from the growth on the sheer walls. Except for a mild distortion, the water was nearly as clear as glass.
While Summer photographed the vault below and above the water, Dirk dove down and began exploring the floor along the walls. The lights from Summer's camera cast weird quivering images in the water as he slowly worked his way around the perimeter.
He almost passed by without seeing a space that opened up between two walls. It was a corner entrance no more than two feet wide. Dirk barely shouldered through with his air tanks, keeping the hand gripping the dive light extended in front of him. He entered another chamber slightly larger than the outer one. This one had recessed seats in the walls and what looked like a large stone bed in the center. At first he thought it was empty of artifacts but then his light revealed a round object with two large holes on the sides and one smaller hole at the top lying on the bed, like armor that covered the torso. A gold necklace rested on the stone above the object with two coiled armbands placed on each side. What looked like an intricate metal lace headpiece sat above the necklace and above it an ornate diadem.
Dirk began to imagine that a body once lay inside the relics. Where the legs might have been were a pair of bronze greaves, ancient armor worn below the knees. A sword blade and dagger blade were situated on the left side while a socketed spearhead without its shaft lay on the right. If there was a body, it was long ago dissolved or consumed by sea creatures that devoured anything organic.
Sitting at the foot of the bed was a large cauldron.
Rising a few inches over four feet, the circumference of the cauldron was too large for him to circle his arms around and touch his fingertips. He rapped the hilt of his dive knife against the side and heard a dull metallic thud. Bronze, he thought to himself. He smeared away the growth on the surface and revealed the figure of a warrior throwing a spear. Using his glove to brush his way around the cauldron, he discovered an army of sculpted men and women wearing armor and posed as if fighting a battle. They carried man-sized shields and long swords.
