Treece tossed him a face mask. “Put this on and hang off the platform.” He said to Gail, “You, too. But for Christ’s sake, don’t go tooting off somewhere.”
Tentatively, not knowing what to expect, David and Gail slipped off the platform and clung to the chains that attached it to the boat. They held their breaths and put their faces in the water.
The scene thirty feet away, on the reef, looked like a gang fight. All that remained of the shark Sanders had stabbed were a few mutilated pieces, and those were being fought over, with savage frenzy, by countless other sharks. Half a dozen large tiger sharks flailed in a blurred ball around a piece of offal. A smaller shark chased a shred of flesh to the bottom, took it in his mouth, and sped away, pursued by two others. There were sharks everywhere, swimming in frantic bursts, responding to smells and sounds and commotion in the water, searching for prey. Some were gray, some brown, some striped.
Large sharks took random swipes at smaller ones, who darted out of reach-or, when they were not quick enough, were wounded and set upon by the mob.
As the Sanderses watched, more and more dark, sinuous shapes glided out of the twilight blue. One cruised directly beneath the boat, and, seeing something on the surface, rose toward them. They hoisted themselves onto the platform and climbed into the boat.
Treece and Coffin were counting ampules on the deck. Treece did not look up. “See what you did?” He was not gloating; his tone of voice said simply: Now you understand.
“I see.”
Gail said, “How long will they stay around?”
“Till the food runs out. But if they’re beating up on each other like they usually do, the food won’t run out. They’ll be there a good long while.”
“So today’s wiped,” Sanders said. “I’m sorry.”
“Aye.” Treece relented. “It’s no great tragedy. We got a fair load for today, and one thing about those beasts: They’ll keep anybody else from messing around down there.”
Gail shivered. She removed her wet-suit top and dried herself. “How many have you got?”
“Four thousand”-Treece looked at Coffin-“eight hundred and seventy,” Coffin said, wrapping the last plastic bag of ampules.
“Not enough.” Treece looked at the shore. “And not much bloody time. I imagine Cloche has had people on the bluffs all day.”
Coffin said, “He can’t make ’em into good divers in two days. And he’ll have to build an air lift.
Can’t send a bunch of bunnies out here to pick around in the sand with their fingers.”
“Two days, no. But not much more than that, to make ’em middling competent. And when he’s ready, they’re going to come fast. I think maybe we’ll be working nights, too.” He saw a look of chagrin on Gail’s face, and he said, “Not tonight. We’ll give your bugle a rest.”
“What will you do with this?” Sanders rested his hand on the artillery shell.
“Nothing, for now. I just wanted to get it out of there.
Later on, I’ll clean it up and sell the brass.”
“Is it really live, after thirty years?”
“Aye.” Treece said. He set the shell in a vise bolted to the starboard gunwale. From a locker he took a huge wrench which he fit to the bottom of the shell. He tugged on the handle, but the wrench didn’t budge. “Corroded into a bloody weld.” He braced his foot against the bulkhead, wrapped both hands around the wrench, and leaned back.
His biceps balled into tight knots; the sinews in his neck strained against the skin, and a red hue suffused his face.
There was a metallic squeak, then the sound of a crack, and the wrench handle moved. Treece heaved again and broke the seal. He unscrewed the bottom of the shell and dropped it on the deck. “Look here.”
The interior of the shell was filled with stiff, gray, spaghettilike strands, bunched tightly together.
Coffin handed Treece a pair of pliers and a box of matches. Treece fished one of the strands from the shell casing and, holding it with the pliers, gave Sanders the matches. “Light it.”
“What is it?”
“Cordite. That’s what makes everything explode.”
Sanders held a match to the end of the cordite strand.
There was a flash, and the strand burned with the brilliance of magnesium.
Gail said, “That’s all there is to a shell that big?”
“All? Christ, girl, pack a hundred of ’em together and touch a primer charge to ’em, and you can blow Bermuda to pieces.”
“How many are there?”
“No way to know,” Coffin said. “There was about ten ton when we started, but some of it’s been salvaged.”
Treece tossed the cordite overboard. It hissed as it hit the water, and, sinking, emitted a stream of bubbles.
They fetched the air hoses from the water and coiled them on the deck. Treece fastened the air-lift tube to the gunwale, then started the engine.
Charlotte, who had been sleeping on the bow, lurched to her feet and-like a soldier reluctantly assuming a midnight watch-took her post on the pulpit.
Coffin hoisted the anchor, and Treece eased the boat through the reefs and headed for shore.
“What time tomorrow?” Coffin said.
“Early. Say eight o’clock. We’ll do four or five hours in the morning, dry off for the afternoon, and start again around six.” He teased Coffin. “I know you old folks need your afternoon nap.”
“The hell you say!” The boat was still seventy-five yards from shore. “I’ll outlast ’em all.”
Coffin hopped onto the gunwale and dove overboard.
Treece watched, grinning, until he saw Coffin surface and start to swim toward shore. Then he swung the boat seaward.
As the boat rose and fell in the gentle swells, something slid off the steering console and clattered to the deck: the escutcheon plate. Gail picked it up and handed it to Treece.
“Lordy, I almost forgot about that,” he said, adding, with a smile at Sanders, “what with all the excitement caused by the daredevil shark hunter.”
“Adam said it was a plate that went around a lock.”
“Aye, but not just any lock. I’ve heard of these, but I’ve never seen one. I don’t know that any others still exist. It was called a three-lock box.
See the three keyholes; it took three keys to open the lock.”
Sanders said, “What was the point of that?”
“To keep one or two people from making off with the goodies inside. Three partners, three keys. Say someone was sending something from the New World back to Spain. The King had a master set, all three keys. The man in wherever it was-Havana-probably had two, the captain of the ship one. They locked the box in Havana, and the captain took it aboard ship. He couldn’t open it with only one key. When he got to Spain, he presented the box to the King.”
“Wouldn’t be hard to pry open.”
“No, but they didn’t usually. The Spaniards took locks as… well, not holy, but special. The British and Dutch sent documents and what-all back and forth in regular boxes; if a ship was pirated, that was that. No lock would do any good. The Spaniards locked everything, almost symbolically. But a three-lock box!” Treece ran his fingers over the escutcheon plate. “Aye, that is interesting.”
“Why?”
“It means there was something very damned important in that box. More’n likely, something very damned important to the King of Spain.”
IX
