The Deep

She stopped a few feet below the surface, struggling to maintain depth, and waited for the pain to subside. She descended farther, until the pain stopped her and forced her to wait. This is the last one, she thought: too many ups and downs.

There was pressure now on her ears, too, and she made herself yawn. She felt two squeaky pops, and the pressure was gone. As she started down again, she saw something move-a grayish blur at the edge of the gloom beyond the reef.

She looked harder, straining to see through the haze.

Nothing. Then, farther to the left, another flicker of movement. She turned her head, trying to anticipate where it might appear next. Behind her, away from the cloud of sand, the water was clearer, and as she turned, she saw it: gliding out of the fog as if from behind a curtain was a shark. It moved with sure, unhurried grace, thrust through the water by smooth strokes of its crescent tail.

A knot of panic struck Gail’s stomach. She was more than halfway to the bottom, and she remembered David’s warning about not fleeing for the surface. She could not tell how big the shark was, for, in open water, there was nothing against which to measure it. Nor could she tell how far away it was; it cruised at the outer limit of her vision. But how far could she see? Fifty feet? Sixty?

The shark swam in a wide circle, and as streaks of sunlight caught its back, Gail could see faint stripes along its sides, light brown slashes against the gray-brown skin. One black eye seemed to be watching her, but it registered no interest, no curiosity.

Still holding the ropes, she continued down toward the belching air lift. She found her weights, strapped them on, and tapped Treece. When he looked at her, with her right hand she made a sinuous swimming motion, then, with her fingers, a biting motion.

She pointed off to the right, where she guessed the shark would be by now. Treece looked in the direction she was pointing, but, surrounded by drifting sand, he saw nothing. He looked back at her, shook his head, and, with a curt wave of his hand, dismissed the danger.

Sanders was not sure he understood what Gail had told Treece. He recalled her nervousness in the company of a barracuda and assumed she had seen another one. But seeing the wide-eyed fear on her face, he wondered. He put the heels of his hands together, spread his fingers, then slammed them closed—a fair approximation of a big mouth. He looked at her, raised his eyebrows, and spread his arms, asking, How big? She shrugged: Can’t tell. But she spread her arms as wide as she could: At least this big. Sanders noticed that half an inch of bloody water was washing around in her mask. He pointed to it and shook his finger, telling her not to clear the mask, not to put blood in the water.

She nodded, but misunderstood. Before he could stop her, she pressed the top of her faceplate and exhaled through her nose. A stream of green, mucous water flushed from her mask and drifted off in the tide.

Sanders smacked himself on the forehead and shook his head. He pointed to the drifting threads of blood.

Gail’s eyes looked stricken. She touched his arm and pointed to the surface, asking if she should go up.

He held her wrist and shook his head firmly: No. He pointed to an empty canvas bag, picked up a handful of ampules, and dropped them into the bag.

The ditch Treece had excavated contained a major lode. There were ampules everywhere, poking up through the sand like raisins in a rice pudding.

Picking carefully with the air lift among the artillery shells, Treece would touch a leaf of rotten wood and let the suction peel the leaf away, revealing forty-eight ampules, in eight neat rows of six.

Sanders could not keep up with Treece. He plucked four, six, ten ampules from the sand at a time and passed them back to Gail, but always Treece would have uncovered more. He tried to lift a full box, but though it looked intact, it had no bottom, and the ampules fell away in the sand. He cupped his hands, scooped fifteen or twenty ampules, and turned to give them to Gail. Her hands weren’t there.

He turned, angrily, to face her, and saw her staring at the reef.

The shark was no more than ten feet away, moving from right to left between them and the coral. It was six or seven feet long, a sleek torpedo of muscle.

It watched them, but made no move toward them, and Sanders wondered if it was seeking the source of the blood in the water. He reached to his calf and unsheathed the knife. He saw that Treece had not noticed the shark. He tapped him and pointed, as the shark swam away to the left, keeping a steady ten or twelve feet from the divers and four or five feet from the reef.

Treece watched the shark pass Gail and turn, perhaps twenty feet away, diasppearing behind the cloud of sand. He rapped his knuckles on the air lift and shook his head. He seemed to be saying, Stay calm.