She was a sleek and smart sailer, slipping through the water and taking the swells like a cat running across a lawn. A random gust from a passing squall chopped the blue water and flecked the crests of the waves with foam. Then they were out of it and into smooth seas and dry air again. Beyond her bowsprit the sea stretched like a giant carpet.
"How far to Branwyn?" asked Summer, deftly heeling Dear Heart over on her beam to gain another knot in speed as the water seethed past her lee rail.
"About twenty-three miles," replied Dirk. "Put her on a heading due south. No need for a detailed course. The island has a distinctive light tower on the eastern end."
Dirk removed his shirt and trimmed the sail in his shorts. Summer had slipped off her dress and changed into a green bikini with floral designs. Her hands were poised and steady on the wheel and she steered the boat over the crests and troughs of the waves with a deft touch, keeping one eye on the islands looming on the horizon and the other on the compass.
Her flowing red hair blew free behind her head and she had the look of a sailor who was going on a day trip from Newport Beach to Catalina Island. After an hour, she lifted a pair of binoculars to her eyes with one hand and stared into the distance. "I think I see the light tower," she said, pointing.
Dirk followed her extended arm and finger. He could not quite make out the tower, but a smudge across the horizon line soon became the low shape of an island. "That will be Branwyn. Steer straight toward it. The harbor lies on her south shore."
A school of flying fish burst from the water in front of the bow and flashed away in all directions. Some leaped alongside the boat as if hoping for food to be thrown over. Then they were replaced by five dolphins, who cavorted around the boat like clowns who wanted applause.
Now the island showed distinctly only three miles distant. The light tower was clearly visible, as was the three-story house on the nearest beach. Dirk picked up the binoculars and peered at the house. No human was visible and the windows looked shuttered. There was a dock running from a sandy beach, but no boat was moored alongside.
They changed places. Dirk took the wheel while Summer went up to the bow, hung on to the rigging and gazed at the island. It was ugly, as islands went. No thick underbrush filled with tropical flowers, no palm trees arched over the beach. Most islands have their own smell. The aroma of moldy vegetation, tropical plants and the scent of its people and their cooking, the pungent smell of smoke from burned fields mixed with that of copra and coconut oil. This island had an essence of death about it, as if it reeked of evil. Her ears picked up the distant rumble of surf as it struck a reef surrounding a lagoon in front of the house. Now she could see a low building on the end of a long runway that must have served as a hangar. But like Dirk, she saw no sign of life. Branwyn was like an abandoned graveyard.
Dirk kept well off the reef while keeping a wary eye over the side at the water that was as clear as water in a bathroom sink. The bottom came into view, a smooth sandy bottom clear of coral. He glanced at the echo sounder every few seconds to make sure the seabed didn't take a sudden rise toward the keel. With a firm hand on the wheel, he steered around the island until he came up on the southern end. He consulted his chart and made a slight course change before he turned and entered the channel as determined by the echo sounder. The rolling waves of the sea turned choppy here, as he sailed through a hundred-yard gap in the outer reef.
It was a tricky entrance. The current was pushing him to port. He thought that Odysseus and his crews must have found entering the harbor duck soup for mariners who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Their advantage in navigating unruly waters was that they could throw out their oars and row. Dirk could have started the engine, but like a pilot with an aircraft that could land by autopilot, he preferred to use his own skills and take her in himself.
Once through the straits, the water calmed and he watched the bottom slowly pass under the keel. He turned the wheel back over to Summer and dropped the sails. Then he started the little diesel and began inspecting the interior of the harbor.
It was small, no more than half a mile in length and half again as much in width. While Summer leaned over the side and inspected the bottom for any unusual anomalies, he leisurely cruised back and forth across the harbor, trying to get a feel for the current and imagining himself on the deck of one of Odysseus' ships, trying to predict where the ancient mariners might have anchored so many centuries ago.
Finally, he settled in an area that was sheltered from the prevailing winds by a rise on the island, a sandy mound that rose nearly a hundred feet above the shoreline. He shut off the engine and dropped the bow anchor by flicking a switch in the cockpit that lowered it by a winch.
"This looks about as good a place as any to go over the side and inspect the bottom."
"It looks flat as a dining room floor," said Summer. "I saw no humps or contours. It stands to reason that wood from a Celtic shipwreck would have rotted away thousands of years ago. Any pieces that survived have to be buried."
"Let's dive. I'll test the consistency of the sand and silt. You swim around and do a visual inspection."
After they put on their dive gear, Dirk checked the anchor to be sure it was snug on the bottom and wouldn't break loose and allow the boat to drift away. Not that it would go far in the harbor. Without the need for wet suits to protect their bodies from cold water temperatures or sharp coral, they went over the side in ten feet of water in only their bathing suits. The water was almost as clear as glass. Visibility was nearly two hundred feet, the temperature warm in the middle eighties, perfect diving conditions.
Forty minutes later, Dirk climbed up the boarding ladder to the deck and removed his air tank and weight belt. He had run a metal probe beneath the surface of the sand, checking for a harder clay layer beneath but found fifteen feet of soft sand before striking bedrock. He sat there for a few minutes, watching Summer's air bubbles travel around the boat. Soon, she was climbing aboard and paused on the boarding ladder to carefully set a coral-encrusted object on the deck. Then she stood with water trickling down her body onto the teak deck as she slipped out of her dive gear.
"What have you got?" asked Dirk.
"I don't know, but it feels too heavy for a rock. I found it a hundred yards offshore, protruding out of the sand."
Dirk scanned the shoreline, still seemingly deserted. He had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if they were being watched.
He picked up the object and gently chipped away the encrustation with his dive knife. Soon the object took on the look of a bird with outstretched wings.
"Looks like an eagle or swan," he said. Then the tip of his knife cut a small scratch that showed silver. "The reason it's heavy is because it's cast out of lead."
Summer took it in her hands and stared at the wings and the beaked head that was turned to the right. "Could it be ancient Celt?"
"The fact that it's sculpted out of lead is a good sign. Dr. Chisholm told me that, besides tin, one of the main attractions of Cornwall was its lead mines. Did you mark the site where you found it?"
She nodded. "I left my probe in the sand with a little orange flag on it."
"How far out?"
"About fifty feet in that direction," she said, pointing.
"Okay, before we dredge or probe with the water jet, we'll run over your site with the metal detector. The side-scan sonar won't be of much use if all the ship wreckage is buried."