I sigh and pull on my goggles, which have been resting on my forehead, and press them to my face to seal them around my eyes. "Does it bite or sting?"
"No, my dear, it is perfectly harmless. It is merely a clam without a shell. Oh, look at it! It is beautiful!"
I do not don the heavy leather gloves I had made for picking up the things that do bite and sting—once burned, twice learned—so I just roll over the side of the raft and slip into the water.
My loose shirt swirls about me as I prepare to go down. It had been decided that I would dive in my undershirt and long drawers for the sake of modesty—decided not by me, though. As for me, I had asked them why couldn't they all just face away when I go into the water and I'd dive starkers, but Higgins and Dr. Sebastian would have none of that, so I must put up with all this cloth billowing around me.
I thrust my head under, put rump and legs in the air, and surface dive on down to the reef.
It is not deep here, only about twenty feet down, and I give my feet a kick and swim over to the coral reef.
Ah, there are some nice sponges there ... I shall have to come collect them later. I had decided early on that I would harvest the plentiful sponges I found in these waters, as it would be an excellent cover for our other activities. Hey, señores, we're just some simple sponge divers trying to make an honest living from the sea, so just leave us alone. The Nancy B.'s rigging is now adorned with fifty, maybe sixty, fine sponges drying in the tropical sun, which I'll be able to sell as soon as I find a market. Never let it be said that Jacky Faber ever passed up a chance for profit when one presented itself.
I grab the unfortunate slug and kick back to the surface and slap the thing onto the raft.
"Wonderful!" exclaims Dr. Sebastian, who has a bucket of seawater ready to plunge the creature into, prolonging its life a bit. I know that I will soon be drawing, painting, and labeling it, and then it will go into a jar of alcohol.
Since I'm already in the water, I decide to go down and take another quick look around.
This time I glide beyond the reef and hang motionless over the abyss that lies on the seaward side of the reef. I cannot see to the bottom of it, and that is a pity, for I know that somewhere down there lies that death-doomed Spanish ship.
Enough daydreaming, girl. Back to work. I twist around to head back over the reef and I'm about ready to head up for another breath when ... There! Sticking out from under a clump of seaweed are the telltale whiskers of a good-sized lobster. Ha, you rascal, you shall grace our table tonight! Come here, now...
I reach out to grab his antennae and whisk him out of there, but then ... Oh God, then ... something grabs on to me. Something green and hideous—the head of a huge snakelike thing. When its jaws clamp down, it just misses the skin of my arm but has me by the shirt and is dragging me down toward its den and I am helpless to stop it. While the head looks at me with baleful eyes, the tail of the hideous thing remains anchored in its burrow and holds tight against all my struggles to free myself from it.
I start to panic.
Oh God, am I to drown in sight of my friends? Is this the end of me, finally? The sunlight and sweet air are right up there, but I can't ... I can't ... get loose from the thing. My lungs cry out for some of that sweet air and my fingers seek the drawstring of my shirt so that I might loosen it and slip it off and let the fiend have it, but I can't, it's tied too tight, I can't, I can't ... I'm gonna drown ... I'm gonna drown right here...
The serpent gives another constriction while drawing back even further into its hole, draggin' me with it. Playin' my last desperate card, I reach up my sleeve and pull out me shiv and stab it at the snake's face, but it doesn't let go. No, it doesn't, and I do it again. But still it won't let go. No, it won't. Now I start sawing through its neck right behind its head, but it still won't let go. Then I feel my knife cut through till it hits the bone and grinds against it and then it's through, and finally ... finally I am released.
I push off the wall of coral with my feet and lunge toward the surface and I wanna suck in a breath so bad. But wait, no not yet, one more second, 'cause if I suck in the water I'll be dead. Just two more feet and ... Now!
I burst through the surface and suck in a great lungful of the blessed air. Oh Lord, how good is your blessed clean air and more valuable than any gold. I lean gasping against the side of the raft, my chest heaving.
My distress below did not go unnoticed. Both Joannie and Davy now stand on the raft with Dr. Sebastian, all looking very concerned.
"A monster ... it almost killed me ... a horrible snake ... I..."
Davy leans over and puts a hand into each of my armpits and pulls me aboard the platform.
"It wouldn't! It didn't let go ... it..." I gasp.
"Damn," says Davy, staring down at my middle, amazed at what he sees.
What? Oh my God!
I scramble to my feet, shrieking, for there on my shirt, dangling between my knees, is the head of the snake, clamped on tight. It never did let go, even in death.
"Get it off me!" I scream, and take my shiv, which I still have clutched in my hand, and slash through that traitorous waist cord of my shirt and then rip off the shirt and fling it to the deck of the raft. That hateful thing is still attached, its implacable eyes still staring into mine.
"Ah, a moray eel," says Dr. Sebastian, leaning down to examine the head. "Gymnothorax miliaris. Such luck. I'd been hoping that we'd get an example of the Family Muraenidae on this expedition, and now we have one. Part of one, at least."
Aghast and shaking with disgust, I cross my arms over my chest and snarl through my clenched teeth, "No, Doctor, no! Family Monster, Genus Monster, Species monster.I will not dive again this day, and I will never on any other day go down there dressed as I was. Know that. That shirt almost got me killed. Propriety be damned."
I turn to climb up the short ladder to the deck of my ship. Higgins is there with a towel, which he throws around my shoulders. I call back to Joannie, "Go down to the stores and get a bolt of light canvas. Then ask Jemimah to meet me in my cabin. Tell her to bring her sewing kit."
"Girl, you nothin' but skin and bones. We've got to get some flesh on you, that's for damned sure."
After that day when Jemimah had been given her freedom papers, she had called me Miss Jacky for a while, but that didn't last. As soon as she got used to the idea that she was really free, I very quickly became just "girl," which is all right with me.
"It ain't for lack of tryin' on your part, Jemimah," I say, finally calm now after my encounter with the fiend. I think back to last night's dinner—fish fried in batter, beans baked in molasses, and fluffy buttered biscuits on the side. Lord, it was so good.
"I mean, how you 'spect to feed babies on them little titties?"
I consider this and then say, "Maybe they'll get bigger when the time comes that I'm actually growin' a baby in my belly."
"Nope. Can't wait till then. Gotta get some meat on your bones. The men, they likes a little jiggle here and there."
Well...
"I'll have you know, Jemimah, that I do have a young man, who says he wants to marry me." I sniff, all prim and proper. "And he seems to like me just as I am. Says he does, anyway."
"Huh! He lyin', then. He'd like you a whole lot better if your skinny hipbones ain't grindin' into his when you two into makin' them babies."
I'm looking over to see how Joannie's taking all this talk. Doesn't seem to interest her much. She doesn't let on that she's even heard.
I had told Jemimah what I wanted in the way of this new diving outfit. Make the bottom snug, Jemimah, with only two- or three-inch legs that I can roll up tight, and don't make it come up too high—just below my belly button. Don't want one loose bit of cloth, nothing for those monsters down there to latch on to. And make me a small top, just big enough to cover my chest. Then sew on some thin shoulder straps to hold it up and put buttons in back to keep it snug. She had nodded and allowed that she could do that, though it did
not seem to her to be at all respectable.
"Can you make one for me, too, Auntie?" Joannie asks of Jemimah. Ever since Joannie got the swimming lesson, we've had a hard time keeping her out of the water.
"Huh! Suppose I can. Gettin' tired of dryin' out your clothes over my stove. All right, girl, you done," she says, and I step down. "Little girl, you get up here now."
Joannie sheds her clothes and hops up on the chair. I look her over.
Hmmm...
Nothing yet, but I know it won't be long.
Jemimah runs her tape over her thin form and makes more marks on the light canvas cloth.
As I climb back into my own regular underway rig, I ask, watching her face, "Joannie, where have you been sleepin' at night?"
She flushes, looks down, then says, "With Danny. Me and him took one of those little rooms down there. Hope you don't mind, Jacky." She gives me the big eyes.
We'll see what I mind, Joannie Nichols, and don't try to pull that look on me 'cause I know all about that.
There are six tiny staterooms on the mess deck, three on either side of the long table. Higgins has one, and so does Dr. Sebastian, and Professor Tilly will have one when he comes aboard. Jim Tanner could have one, too, but he perfers to sling his hammock with the rest of the men in the fo'c's'le, where it's cooler. Or out on deck now that it's getting really warm. Jemimah's is one of the rooms, too. The one closest to her galley.
So the two little rascals are all snugged up. Didn't waste much time.
Hmmmm...
Chapter 20
I gaze over at the island and try to put myself in the place of that Spanish lieutenant who stood on the deck of his sinking ship and tried to mark the spot where she was going down. I picture him as young, idealistic, trying to do his duty to his ship and to his men as best he could. I think on the words he later wrote:
I looked across the face of our compass to the end of the Key of Bones and saw that it bore away at about 010 degrees...
I look across my own compass to the western tip of Key West and see that it does indeed bear north, northeast at 010 degrees, just like Spanish Lieutenant Carlos Maria Santana Juarez marked it. Or marked it as well as he could, seeing that his ship was foundering at the time he took the bearing and he would have been rather rushed.
Then I took a bearing on a house that was built on the shore some distance to the east and that bearing was about 075 degrees...
That is the problem. When I squint across my compass rose on that bearing, I see nothing—just a long line of mangroves and, behind them, some scrubby trees, so I cannot get that second and very crucial cross-bearing that would give us a better idea of where the treasure ship lies. The house, or more likely an Indian thatch-roofed hut, that Juarez saw is long gone, no doubt wiped out by a storm. Probably a hundred hurricanes have hit here since the one that took the Santa Magdalena down.
I sigh for lost bearings and look out over the activity on my ship. It is morning and we have had breakfast but haven't started the day's exploratory dives. Jim Tanner has manned the helm and my crew is getting ready to move the ship another fifty yards up the reef. That's the routine we've worked out: Move to a different spot each day, then I go down and look around. If I find nothing—and I have found nothing but many members of the local slug and bug population, to the great delight of the Doctor but to the joy of no one else—then we move on, and so inch our way along the coast. I have seen nothing that looks like the remains of a wrecked ship. 'Course the Santa Magdalena has been down there for seventy-odd years and there might not be much left of her.
This day, I do not give the order to move. Not yet, anyway. Instead, I call out, "Davy ... Tink ... Get the Star down and ready. I want to have a close look around that shore. Take rifles."
Dr. Sebastian comes up next to me and lifts his eyebrows in question.
"I'm going over to look for any sign of habitation on that shore. We need that other bearing, Doctor, else we'll be scouring the sea floor forever."
"Which would be all right with me," replies our avid natural scientist, looking over at the key. "I believe I shall accompany you on this little expedition. I must get my equipment." He scurries off to gather his specimen jars, magnifying glass, and, I am sure, his butterfly net.
The Star is lowered over the side, to bob in the water next to the raft, and as the sail is being rigged, Joannie comes up and gives me the big eyes. She already has her swimming suit on—she fairly lives in the thing—but I have not yet donned mine today.
"The galley all cleaned up?" I ask and she nods. "Did Jemimah say you were done?" Another nod. "All right, Joan-nie, get in. You, too, Daniel." They both whoop as they head for the boat. Not to be outdone by Joannie, Daniel now has a pair of canvas shorts of his own, and goes about virtually shirtless, tanned brown as a nut.
"Wait jes' a minute," says Jemimah, who has just come on deck to take up her usual after-breakfast post—a chair she has set up just after the forward mast where she sits and watches the ship's doings or gazes serenely out to sea. "Since you goin' over there, each of you take a pail and bring back a mess of them coon oysters. Full pails now, y'hear?"
"Yes, Auntie, we do," chorus the pair, as each grabs one of the buckets used for swabbing the deck and clambers onto the lifeboat. I guess they both have been instructed by Jemimah as to how to address her.
"And you, girl, you oughta look out for some fresh water ... See if there's any over there," she says to me as she settles into her chair. "We're gettin' low, mighty low. Only two barrels left."
Hmmm ... That is a problem. We've got all our catch basins out, ready to collect the rain when it falls, but the trouble is, it hasn't. In the tropics, the rains come nearly every day in the summer, but this ain't summer, and I myself need at least three bucketsful a day to rinse off the salt after a day's diving. Damn.
"Yes, Jemimah, I will look, but I have my doubts. When we were over there before, it seemed to be just a low, dry sandbar with those mangrove trees around the edges."
We had, some days ago, taken the Star and sailed around Key West, hoping to find some sort of settlement where we could resupply and I could maybe sell my sponges. But after landing on a likely looking beach at the western tip of the island, we found nothing except some evidence of earlier rude encampments—whether Spanish, Indian, or pirate, we could not tell. The Spanish named the island Cayo Hueso, or "Bone Key," because of the piles of human bones they found there, remnants of some ancient Indian massacre, and there still are some of those bones around. It's got a nice little harbor, though, and I decide that we will pull the Nancy B. in there in the event of a storm.
"Well, you got to fix it somehow, what with you and the girl child takin' all them baths," Jemimah goes on. "And I can't make biscuits and soups and such without water." She has a basket of potatoes next to her on the deck and reaches down for one and begins to peel it.
"I know, Jemimah," I say, then sigh, as I turn to go down into my cabin. "Don't worry, we'll fix it."
When I get there, I doff my clothes and reach for my swimming suit, which had been hung up to dry from yesterday's diving, and climb into the bottom part.
The suit has worked out beautifully. When first I got it wet, it shrank up most admirably, molding itself to my form perfectly and I was no more bothered with loose cloth swirling about me underwater. Plus, it doesn't go all transparent when wet like my shirt and drawers did, so I don't have to be constantly pulling it away from myself. The only thing the bottom of the suit does do that's a little annoying is ride up over my butt cheeks a bit, but, again, who cares about that?
The first time I appeared on deck in it, the day after the encounter with that horrid eel, I heard some sharp intakes of breath from certain members of my crew, but they all got over it right quick. After all, it's just me in all my scrawniness, so who could possibly care? Well, Higgins does, for one, as he is right there with a towel to wrap around me every time I step back on the deck after a day's diving. Davy just laughed and s
aid, "And what would Jaimy say about his blushing bride-to-be if he saw her prancin' about like that?" And I shot back, "Just you mind your work, Seaman Jones, and don't worry about what your betters are thinkin'. Remember, Davy, who's the Captain of this here barky."
I'm slipping the straps of my suit top over my shoulders as I hear a light knock on the door—two raps, a pause, then another two.
"Come in, Higgins, and do me up." In a moment I feel his hands at my shoulder blades, fastening the buttons. There, all nice and snug now.
Higgins goes to the drawer where I keep my pistols, takes them out, and commences loading them.
"I don't think I'll need those today. The place looks to be deserted." I reach into my seabag and pull out a red bandanna, which I tie around my neck to keep off the sun.
"Still, Miss, there's no sense in taking chances." Unless we are in some nice, safe town, Higgins doesn't like to let me out of his sight without my being armed.
I roll up the short legs of the suit as far as they will go and then put my right foot up on my chair. Taking my shiv in its sheath from the desktop, I strap it around my right calf—I had altered the sheath's harness to fit there where it is out of the way yet still very convenient to my hand when needed underwater—and then stand with my fists on my hips, grin, and say, "So, Higgins, how do I look?"
"Perfectly barbarous." He sighs, with one of his deep whatever-is-to-be-done-with-her sighs. "However, let's get these on you to complete the travesty."
He straps on my pistols and I am out the hatch, over the deck, and into the Star.
"All right, lads, let's go."
It takes us about a half hour to get to the western tip of the key, then we start to work our way eastward close to shore, peering into the wall of mangroves for any sign of an opening. The bottom, about four feet down, is mostly sandy with occasional large patches of waving sea grass. I'm standing at the mast, Davy's in the bow, Tink's tending the sail, while Daniel's on the tiller. I wanted to give Daniel some experience in small-boat handling, plus let him show off to Joan-nie what a fine young sailor lad he is. She is seated beside him, feigning disinterest in his manly display.