Arrow's Fall by Joel Scott

Author:Joel Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2019-05-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

By ten o’clock the next morning Danny and I had moved the dive gear aboard Tramp and set up a basic schedule with Padraic and Molly. There would be two teams of divers, each partner always in sight of the other, and both teams with an observer above them in a dinghy with a lead line down while they worked. We’d use a system of buoys to mark the areas being searched and move them for each ensuing dive. Daniel and Elinor made up one team and I’d alternate with Molly and Laura on the other, Laura sticking to the relatively shallow areas until she gained more experience, and Molly accompanying me on the deeper dives. Padraic had final responsibility for charting the dives and setting up each day’s program.

I was uncertain about Laura’s morning after reaction to the evening’s events; I’d untangled myself at first light and slipped silently away and left her sleeping. She finally appeared with a wan smile and a tentative glance in my direction, and I walked up and kissed her on the cheek and wished her a good morning. Padraic smiled upon us, so that was all right. Later on, Laura came and sat beside me as we worked out the day’s diving details, her hand creeping surreptitiously down and squeezing mine.

“Right, let’s get started then.”

Danny and Elinor jumped up from the table and went out on deck and began putting on snorkels, masks, and fins. The water was relatively shallow, nothing deeper than fifty feet in the grid, and so clear we could get by with free diving to start with. Later in the day when we became tired, we’d use the hookahs. We’d bought a second one from a Dutch boat that was selling off its gear prior to returning home. Each unit was mounted on a free-floating platform with a pair of fifty-foot air lines attached and would allow us to search the shallower depths without the complications of tanks.

We eliminated any area that was heavily fished by the villagers who were familiar with every rock and reef. There was no chance they would have failed to spot any wreckage. There were other areas less visited, where the fishing was uncertain, and we concentrated our efforts there. Diving this shallow was more fun than work, and that was the way we wanted it for the first while. Let everyone get comfortable in the water and learn their tolerances, building confidence for the deeper, more dangerous dives that would follow later on.

Snorkelling in the sheltered lagoons was a picnic, the water placid, the currents nonexistent, the only sharks the occasional small white tips who moved away at sight of us. When we moved outside the sheltering reefs into the treacherous passes where the erratic tides sucked and whirled, and the predators moved like flashing silver knives through the roiled waters, it would be much different.

The days passed like a vacationer’s dream: rising early to a light breakfast and then into the

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