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SOMETHING LAY AHEAD, dark against the thick blue-green swells

David Moore reached back and cut the sputtering motor The sharp, hot sun lay across his bare back and shoulders like a bright tropical jacket The battered fisherman&039;s skiff slowed, rolled lazily across the next swell, and Moore turned the tiller so whatever was in the water would colare of sun off sea, he reached over the gunwale and brought the object up

It was another piece of timber - God only knehere it had drifted or been torn froed by the salt water, and he placed it in the bottom of the boat to examine it On one side there were the reround An S and an A Salty? Sally? Samantha? It was evidently a shard of a boat&039;s transom, perhaps one of the Coquina boats, perhaps one that had drifted fro way off He knew the na fleet: Jolly Mack, Kinkee, Blue Lady, Lucy J Leen, Gallant, a dozen others This boat had probably been destroyed in soht in the teeth of the tropical storm that had screamed across the island three days previously So to this boat, Moore thought, staring at the plank He didn&039;t want to think about that It brought up toothe tiller so that the skiff&039;s proas ai of Kiss Bottoh, "somewhat jumpin&039;" as the Caribbean fishere the swells struck hard against the hull There was debris all around: ing, tree branches, roof tiles, even a rusted tin placard that read COLA, BEER, WINE He had seen it ripped off the front of the Landfall Tavern froh across the island roofs and had been tossed in a wild, rain-swept spiral into the sea As Moore passed through the channel he could see the ragged edges of the reef, stubbled with brown and green coral growths, just grazing the surface A lot of boats had been torn open by those treacherous devil&039;s-horns, and had had to be dragged off to be patched up at the island&039;s boatyard or to die in deeper water Outside the reef were two "clangers," brightly painted orange buoys that banged and rattled as they were jostled together by the rough currents

Moore steered between thereen water before him, and then he headed toward the deeper, almost purple sea in the distance It was still shallow just off Kiss Bottom - thirty to thirty-five feet - but the sand and coral bottom quickly shelved off into as respectfully and fearfully known as the Abyss

Moore turned in his seat and glanced back at the island he&039;d just steered fro The dark, tire-lined piers, the fishere of Coquina with its houses and shops of stucco brilliantly painted in wild reds, oranges, pale pinks, blues, browns, light greens In the white sunlight the colors were dazzling He let his eyes e and wound its way, on a path of ruts and gravel, to a sabled roof and white wrought-iron terraces overlooking the harbor The Indigo Inn was his hotel; he&039;d made the purchase three years before fro back to the States In the last few days Moore and Markus, his handy broken s, shattered porch railing slats, and shutters that had been ripped away by the high winds They did a patchwork job replacing things that had been broken before and would surely be broken again In the islands, decay was the only certainty

He turned out fro the water around him Most of the debris had been washed ashore in the previous few days and whatever was still usable had been gathered up by the islanders The storm had been a particularly fierce one even for Septe the autumn hurricane season It had blown in from the east, al first into the Coquina harbor, sending boats flying against the piers, the stors to pieces, then screa palms and shrubs, and e of Caribville on the island&039;s northern point before finally heading out to sea again The few radios that were the island&039;s sole method of communication had been knocked out by electrical interference It was a wonder there had been so few serious injuries: only a few broken bones and lacerations, which had been tended by Dr Maxwell at the clinic

The sea darkened under his boat The squat stone tower of the Carib Point beacon lay over his shoulder, a sighting point still used on storhters out in the channel Since it lay near the Carib settlement, it had been allowed to fall into a state of near-ruin Moore corrected his course a few degrees In another few ht spot; the beacon was just over his left shoulder and the tin-roofed structures of the boatyard drydock shelters over his right He cut the rapple anchor over the side, allowing the rope to coil out from a hand-winch reel When the line stopped, he knew that he&039;d been correct; he was in about fifty feet of water, at the very rim of the Abyss, where the bottoet his diving gear and tank in the stern He sat down, al, and took off his khaki slacks and thongs He wore dark-blue bathing briefs underneath, and he pulled a thin cotton T-shirt over his shoulders to guard against strap-burn When he&039;d turned on his tank&039;s air supply, he hoisted the tank to his shoulders and strapped it on securely Then he looked out across the Abyss

In the distance he could see the faint shapes of far-off land masses: Chocolate Hole, Sandy Cay, Starfish Cay They were ed beaches - and of the three nearest, only Chocolate Hole was really a village It was a tiny settle green sea-turtles to the bulky industry boats that dealt in local island products Here, out in the open, the breeze was strong and warm on Moore&039;s face He let his eyes wander the plain of purple water above the great depths

Only a few fisherenerally stayed nearer Coquina or fished for albacore and jacks in the shalloaters to the south The Abyss was a haunted place, so the old islanders - the superstitious ones - said A score of thes out here There were those who&039;d been vehe with a spectral e all around her, the ht Though Moore was a s, he was sometimes inclined to believe it wasn&039;t just bad ru Not from the looks some of those men had in their eyes

But now, in the clear afternoon sunlight, with the entire sky a huge unbroken canopy of hot blue, he could not believe in ghosts At least, not sailing the surface

When Moore looked into a mirror, he saw first his father&039;s eyes, as blue as the Caribbean depths theence and caution He had let his beard grohen he reached the islands from Europe, and by the time he&039;d stepped off a tramp steamer onto Coquina&039;s shore he was a hard-ure with black hair that curled around his collar, and a dark beard and ht-years away from the life he&039;d led in Baltimore, his birthplace No one in Baltimore - no one who renized him, except perhaps by his eyes He was a differentexecutive in his father&039;s bank; who&039;d lived in a modest if expensive home in a fashionable Baltiht-year-old son, Brian; who&039;d fought for a membership at the Amsterdam Hills Country Club; who&039;d owned a beautiful, teak-decked sailing sloop, custom-built by a Canadian firne and all - Destiny&039;s Child In those days he had worn "the uniforimental-striped ties, to quiet business luncheons and discussions in oak-paneled drawing roo and restless unease

He slipped into his black swiht leg, then secured a weight-belt to his waist Putting on a pair of gauntlet gloves, Moore rinsed out his , and then rinsed it out again He eased the ulator mouthpiece between his teeth, sucked and exhaled to make certain it was clear, then flipped hiunwale in an easy, practiced ht-blue walls streaht, he waited for his bubbles to clear, watching the rise and fall of the hull above him When he had adjusted to his underwater world, Moore swaan to follow it hand-over-hand into the depths, his breath appearing before hilobes that ascended to the surface He went slowly, clearing his ears by squeezing his nostrils shut and blowing every few seconds In another h walls of tangled coral, and he let go, kicking smoothly ahen he ca the bottos doing all the work, his arhts told hiht place: the bulbous mass of brown brain coral that had anificent forest of staghorn coral, now filled with the dart and shily blue and yellow, ae that stirred with the currents below, Moore saw a brigade of crabs on thesolid when they sensed his h the coral openings or whisked the The reef dwellers were too accustomed to the predators to take any chances A shadow covered hile ray swa like beautiful ling down as the bottonarled dark coral He swah a maze of sea fans, then rose above the wall and stopped abruptly

Beneath hi The sea turned froe h he&039;d been prepared, the sight of it sent an electric chill through hilowing green and iridescent, cahosts did exist, Moore thought, they probably were down in that awesoht of the brass ship&039;s coan to descend

There was a freighter down there sos would explode before he could ever reach it It had gone down so World War II - that was all he could glean from the stories that floated about the island Details were sketchy, and no one here really liked to talk about the war He had gone diving in this area the year before, after another fierce store littered with pieces of s, even the bow portion of a shattered lifeboat On that dive Moore had found an old ship&039;s co He had taken the compass back to the inn, but when he&039;d returned to the Abyss a few days afterward the sand had settled back like a flat white carpet, and nothing remained Another storm had hit soon after, but he hadn&039;t had the chance to dive again, so he&039;d had to wait for the following season in hopes of finding soe

He continued doard Where&039;s that ledge? he wondered suddenly, trying to pierce the deep-blue mist It&039;s dropped away entirely But then it e of rock-dappled sand There was so metal a few feet ahead: a rusted can He picked it up It was still sealed, though badly dented He let it fall, swam on In the midst of clumps of coral, probably ripped from the reef at the Abyss rileahtly He held one up and saw himself reflected in the scoured hter&039;s crew? he wondered Maybe What would be inside? Peaches? Vegetables? He wondered if out of curiosity he should open one to see as included in a 1942 merchant seaman&039;s diet

The Abyss stretched down beneath hie eye; there was a series of ledges, all sand choked with rock at various depths, one beneath the other until they faded froht his eye It had a definite shape, but he couldn&039;t deterued by the mound; he hadn&039;t noticed it before, but then his attention had been on an upper ledge, not the lower ones He was perhaps ten feet above it when he realized so froan to beatthe sand back with quick motions of his fins The top of a cylinder of soerly Iron Unrowth, the object, like the cans, had been colass in it, very heavily scarred What in God&039;s name? he wondered He reached down and pulled at it, only half-expecting it to co the sand away froain at it No use, David old cock, he told hiht He checked his atch Time to head for the surface But this cylinder: the scars of sand abrasion glinting, the glass inset Fascinating as hell It could be soazed down at the sand stirred by his everywas buried beneath it