The Deep

him to within inches of the bouncing hull. He exhaled and dropped swiftly to the bottom. He could not stand on the sand; the current was less severe than on the surface, but still strong enough to cast him forward and back, like hay in a windstorm. He fell to his knees and crawled toward the reef. Above him, Treece descended fast, dragging two canvas bags and the air-lift tube.

The surge near the reef was worse: waves washing overhead caused bottom eddies that pushed the divers onto the rocks. Sanders tried to stop before the reef, but couldn’t. His hip struck a rock, and he tumbled toward sharp outcroppings of coral. He swung an arm blindly, hit something, and grabbed it: a coral ledge. Without the rubber glove, his hand would have been torn. His body hung horizontally in the current; he saw Treece and Coffin, lying face down in the sand, apparently free from the surge, already digging with the air lift.

Sanders dragged himself forward, hand over hand, until he reached the bottom of the reef. He flattened himself beside Coffin. Though his legs still tended to swing toward the reef, he found that by jamming his knees into the sand he could remain fairly steady. CofHn passed him a bag, then the first few handfuls of ampules.

In an hour, they filled all three bags six times. Sanders made six trips to the surface, there to struggle to hold onto the heaving diving platform and to avoid being swept under the boat while Gail emptied the bags. He was cold and tired, and his sinuses ached. Each descent was more difficult, took longer, for his ears resisted clearing and the sinus cavities above his eyes squeaked in protest.

With hand signals, Sanders asked Coffin to change places with him, to take the next few trips; Coffin agreed. Sanders lay prone at the lip of the hole Treece was digging, and, as the air lift exposed the ampules, snared them before they could be carried away.

Another hour passed-seven trips this time-and Coffin and Sanders changed places again. Rising with the bags, Sanders looked at his watch: almost eleven o’clock.

He clung to the platform and waited for the bags. When Gail handed them to him, he lifted the bottom of his mask and said, “How many?”

“I can’t count them all. Six, eight thousand, maybe ten. I stopped counting at five thousand; you’re bringing them up too fast.”

Sanders made five more trips with the bags, and by now he felt a physical misery more profound than anything he had ever experienced. No specific pain or discomfort was worse than any other: everything felt terrible, even his toes, which were wracked with periodic cramps that forced him to kick in an awkward, inefficient fashion. Hanging on the surface, he looked down and wondered how long it would take him to get to the bottom this time; his last descent had taken so long that by the time he arrived at the reef, enough ampules had been excavated to refill the bags immediately.

He forced himself down through the layers of pain and crawled to the reef. He was settling beside the heap of ampules when a surge hit him. He flailed with his legs, reaching for the bottom, but his legs wouldn’t touch; he was thrust at the wall of coral. In the last seconds before he hit the reef, he raised his gloved hands in front of his face and brought up his knees, hoping to take the impact with his flippers or his arms.

His right knee hit first, and whatever it hit gave way and broke. Then he was spun around and his buttocks hit the rocks, jerking his head backward. The muscles in his neck resisted, but his head hit-not hard, for something cushioned it: a sea fan. He scrambled for a handhold and found a rock, which pulled free and tumbled down the face of the reef, knocking other rocks loose as it fell.

The surge passed, and Sanders lay against the reef, breathing hard, assessing the damage done to his aching body. There were new pains, but none seemed more wretched than those he had had before.

He inched down the reef face, making sure of each handhold before he moved to the next. Glancing to his left, he saw something shine within the bowels of the reef, a twinkle that dulled as soon as the shaft of sunlight moved away. It was in a hole at least two feet deep. Another ray of light coursed into the hole; again a twinkle.

Sanders leaned back against the reef, one leg wrapped around a boulder, one hand clutching a piece of coral. He waved, to attract Treece’s attention, but Treece was intent on the ditch full of ampules. He waited, knowing that Coffin would look up when he noticed that the ampules he was passing back to Sanders weren’t being collected, and a moment later he saw Coffin’s eyes. He pointed at Treece and at the hole in the reef.

Coffin tapped Treece; Treece looked up, set the air lift against the reef, and swam to Sanders.

A cloud passed before the sun, and the shadow crept along the bottom, darkening the water and turning the sand gray. Treece looked at Sanders, raised his eyebrows, and mouthed the word “what.”