Walter passed me the camera at the same time that the boat drifted closer and then I didn’t need the telephoto to see what was going on.
Everybody saw.
Again, a hush fell over the boat.
I could now see the upper slope of the rock rising from the sea, and what I’d taken at foggier distance to be some sort of sea grass I now identified as something else entirely. It was a mass of moving bodies. It was a mass of reddish crabs creeping up the flank and the word that came to my mind was escape. They were escaping the sea. Unlike the dazed and dying fish that littered the water, these creatures were able to climb out.
And the birds made a banquet yet again.
CHAPTER 5
The Sea Spray left the strange zone and headed “back to the barn,” as Captain Keasling put it.
She rebuffed all questions about the ailing sea creatures, about the frenzied crabs. “Go ask a biologist,” she said, and retreated into the wheelhouse.
There were none aboard.
There were only a couple of uneasy jokes. Should’ve brought a net, scoop up dinner. If I were a crab I’d get the hell out of there, too.
And then silence, thick as the fog.
Sometime later, someone shouted “Whale!”
I’d had my fill of sea creatures but I roused myself to turn and look. And I thought no, it’s not a whale, it’s something else. It was black and shiny, just breaking the surface, off in the near distance.
Doug Tolliver went to the rail and stared, and then he dashed to the wheelhouse and spoke to Captain Keasling, and then the Sea Spray abruptly turned course and headed straight for the thing that wasn’t a whale.
And then motored down.
Surprises upon surprises.
A scuba diver floated belly-up out here in the middle of nowhere, no other boat in sight.
A buzz ran through the passengers. Shock. Thrill.
The diver was in full gear. His buoyancy compensator was keeping him afloat, so he must have inflated the air bladder on the BC at some point. And then, it appeared, passed out. The regulator had fallen out of his mouth. He made no movements.
And then the captain and the boatman were in motion. Keasling shouted “get the horseshoe” and Lanny went running and Keasling backed the square end of the boat up to the diver, precise as a surgeon, and then Lanny reappeared wearing a life vest, carrying a harness, and he opened the gate that let onto the ladder and started down.
We ganged the rails to watch.
Lanny was already on the little dive platform just above the water line. He clipped himself to the ladder with a safety line and got on his knees and looped the horseshoe harness over the diver. And then Keasling was there at the gate. Lanny tossed her a coiled yellow rope that attached to the harness. She played out the rope, bellowing, “I need big strong men on the line,” and bird watchers and whale watchers alike scrambled and hauled. Lanny came up first, guiding the rope, bumping the diver aboard.
They stripped him of his BC and tank and laid him out on a bench.
The heavyset man, my neighbor who’d scorned pelicans, pushed his way forward—“I’m a doctor, I’m a doctor”—and he bent over the body.
Captain Keasling and Doug Tolliver herded the rest of us back.
The diver groaned and muttered words I did not understand.
And now the doctor was stripping the remainder of the diver’s gear. Mask, hood, weight belt, dive bag went onto the deck and Lanny edged in and shelved the equipment on the bench, out of the way. The doctor checked the diver’s vitals, flinging words. Alive. Shock. Hypothermia. And then he called Captain Keasling in close and asked her, “Is that from a jellyfish?”
I angled for a view and saw a wicked red blistering welt across the diver’s face.
“That jelly we saw earlier?” somebody said. “With the purple racing stripes?”
The talk on the boat turned to the ghostly jellyfish, although who knew where that had been in relation to where we were now. In any case, surely there was more than one jellyfish in this ocean.
Captain Keasling studied the diver. “Purple-stripe gives a hellacious sting. Not usually lethal.”
Well that was reassuring.
Walter moved close to me. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
I nodded. The missing fisherman, the damaged boats, the strange zone, and now the diver. All in the same patch of ocean. And yet, it’s a big ocean. If we looked in the right places we’d find a dozen calamities, a dozen inexplicable zones. Or more. Or less. I really had no idea because I found this ocean more mysterious than the center of the earth. Still, I did know my carbon-oxygen cycle — I knew that half the breaths I take come courtesy of the sea. And I was growing a little protective of it.
My attention caught on Lanny. He had hold of the diver’s mesh bag, strangling it by the neck, twisting the mesh around something reddish inside, and I wouldn’t have paid it much heed but for the stricken look on Lanny’s face.
I saw Captain Keasling take notice as well, wearing that frown of hers.
I wondered if the boatman was somehow mishandling the diver’s gear. I drifted over to Keasling with the intention of asking if Lanny was okay, putting in a good word for him, in appreciation for the fennel and the poem. I said, “He did a great job. Pulling in the diver.” I added, “You both did.”
She gave a brusque nod. “We train.”
“Ah.”
“My boatman’s a little slow.” She tapped her head.
“I realize that.”
She turned to me now. “Doesn’t mean he needs a special friend.”
CHAPTER 6
Sandy Keasling stood on the dock, frowning.
There was a time, she recalled, when she’d sung out the tides. High, low, spring tide, slack tide, higher-high water and lower-low water. Neap tide, her favorite, because that’s when the tidal range varied least and low water was not so low and a skipper was less likely to run her boat aground.
There was a time when she’d sung out loud in the wheelhouse.
Now she stood on the dock without a song.
The ambulance was here and the paramedics worked on the diver.
Doug Tolliver and the geologist, Walter-something, were examining the dive gear to see if anything else went wrong with the diver. Doug was a diver himself and so he’d know what he was doing, checking the tank and the hoses. She wondered if Walter-something thought he was going to find some sea soil caught in the crevices. She wondered about his eyesight. He looked old, with his thinning hair and weathered skin. Looked like he spent a lot of time outdoors. Still at it, so she guessed he knew what he was doing.
The other geologist, Cassie-something, was working at the spots on the Sea Spray. Young — well, maybe into her thirties. The looks-with-brains type. All bright-eyed and bushy-tailed but those cool gray eyes watching, watching. Sandy wondered if Cassie-something was going to find out how the spots got there.
Eh, she remembered their names well enough. Walter Shaws and Cassie Oldfield. She just didn’t want to know them.
The one she wanted to know was the injured diver.
Lanny was gawking at the diver and she needed to see what he saw.
But she couldn’t shake the damn bird-watching doctor. Badgering her for a refund. He thought he deserved a free trip since he’d done all that doctoring on board. She nodded, looking for her chance with the diver. When the doctor wouldn’t shut up she told him to go to the office and tell them Captain Keasling said give him a refund and two free tickets for another trip. Hell, give him a lifetime pass.