They surfaced by the small ladder suspended over the side, and Anne went up first. Mallory followed her, pulled off his mask and turned to give Fiona a hand. She squatted on the deck, taking the pieces of pottery from her bag one by one and laying them out carefully.
Raoul Guyon had set up an easel next to the wheelhouse and was sketching Hamish Grant, who sat in the bows. The Frenchman put down his pencil and moved across to join them.
The General turned his head sharply. “What’s going on?”
“Fiona’s found some pottery,” Anne said.
Guyon turned to Mallory, a strange, alien-looking figure in his webbed feet and black rubber suit. “What’s it like down there?”
“Interesting,” Mallory said. “You should try it.”
“Perhaps later. I’d like to get my sketches of the General finished and the light is just right.”
Fiona unstrapped her aqualung, squatted down on the deck again and started to sort through the pieces of pottery, completely absorbed by her task.
Anne turned to Mallory. “That’s the last we’ll see of her today.”
“Do you want to go down again?”
She shook her head. “I’d like to try out the aquamobiles. You take one and I’ll have the other. We’ll go round the point to the St. Pierre reef. I’ll show you the Middle Passage and there’s at least one interesting wreck.”
Guyon helped Mallory bring the two aquamobiles up from the saloon. They were bullet-shaped underwater scooters driven by battery-operated propellers, designed to operate at depths of up to one hundred and fifty feet. They carried their own spotlights for use when visibility was bad.
Anne and Mallory went over the side and Guyon passed down the heavy scooters. Anne moved away at once, running on the surface, and Mallory went after her.
The sea was calm, the sun bright on the face of the water, but as they approached the great finger of rock jutting out into the sea at the western end of the island Mallory became aware of cross-currents tugging at his body. Anne raised an arm in a quick signal and disappeared.
The sensation of speed underwater was extraordinary. To Mallory it seemed as if he were hurtling through space as he chased the yellow-clad figure in front of him and yet his effective speed was not much more than three knots.
The red nose of the scooter whipped through the blue-green water, pulling him across a jumbled mass of black rocks. For a moment currents seemed to pull his body in several directions at once and then he was round the point and into calmer water.
They surfaced by a weed-covered shoulder of rock and Anne sat on its slope half out of the water and pulled up her mask. On either side, and stretching across to St. Pierre, was white water, surf breaking everywhere over the jagged rocks which made up the central reef mass.
“At low tide most of the reef is twenty feet above water,” she said. “Stretching all the way to St. Pierre like a giant’s causeway.”
“Could it be crossed on foot?”
She looked dubious. “I wouldn’t like to try. It’s only clear for an hour. Something to do with another flood which moves in this way from the Atlantic.”
A mile away the great, jagged rock of St. Pierre lifted out of the sea. The castle was perched on the ultimate edge of the cliffs, its strange, pointed Gothic towers in sharp relief against the blue sky. The sea creamed over rocks two hundred feet below.
“What do you think of it?” she said.
“It must have cost a fortune to build even on the golden tide of Victorian prosperity.” He shaded his eyes and frowned. “I can’t see a jetty.”
“It’s under the island. If you look carefully beyond the last line of rocks you’ll see the entrance in the cliffs. At high water there’s only ten- or twelve-foot clearance.”
“Is the water very deep in there?” he said casually.
She nodded. “Even at low water there’s a good ten fathoms. There’s a fault in the sea-bed which splits the reef along the centre. It runs right under St. Pierre.”
“Would that be your famous Middle Passage?”
“That’s right, and it’s well worth seeing.”
She clamped her rubber mouthpiece between her teeth, pulled down the mask and eased herself back into the water. Visibility was still good and Mallory could see the great boulders of the reef four or five fathoms beneath, and then quite suddenly Anne tilted her scooter over a shelf of granite and went down into space.
They moved through a misty tunnel of rock, sunlight slanting through fissures and cracks in the roof in wavering bands of light. In places the passage was reminiscent of a cathedral nave, the rock arched up on either side to support the roof, and then the dimness brightened and they moved into a section which was open to the sea.
Anne was twenty or thirty feet in front and she paused, waiting for him. When he approached she jack-knifed. Mallory went after her, the scarlet nose of his scooter cleaving the water, fish crowding to either side. At ten fathoms he moved into a mysterious green dusk with visibility considerably reduced.
Beneath him she had paused, hovering over a ledge. When he joined her he saw, to his astonishment, a three-ton Bedford truck wedged on its side in a large fissure. The canvas tilt had long since disappeared, but when he moved in close he saw painted on the side the white star which all Allied vehicles had carried on D-Day and after.
They moved away again and a moment later the outline of a ship’s stern loomed out of the gloom Every rail, every line, was festooned with strange submarine growths and he followed the curving side to where a ragged torpedo hole gaped darkly at him. Beneath, tilted into a crevasse, was a Churchill tank, beyond it, the shapes of trucks, a solitary field-gun’s barrel slanting towards the surface.
Mallory followed Anne across the deck to the wheelhouse. The open door swung gently in the current, the deck around it smashed and broken as if by some internal explosion. The wheel was still intact and also the compass in its mounting, encrusted with scales. When Mallory moved inside he had a strange sensation that someone should be there, that something was missing. A bad end for a good ship, he thought, and moved out again. She tapped him on the shoulder, and together they rose towards the luminosity that was the surface.
They hauled themselves on to the flat top of a large rock, dry in the sun, and Anne pulled up her mask and breathed deeply several times.
“What’s the story?” Mallory said.
She shrugged. “One of the D-Day armada that never made it. She was torpedoed near Guernsey. When her engines stopped the tide carried her straight in across the reef. Apparently, the crew got away earlier in the lifeboats.”
“Where did you get the story?”
“From Owen Morgan. There are plenty of wrecks in these waters and Owen knows them all – and their histories. Something of a hobby with him.”
“Interesting,” Mallory said. “I’d like to take another look. Feel up to it?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll wait for you here. Don’t stay too long. When the tide starts turning there’s quite an undercurrent through the passage.”
He was aware of it almost at once like an invisible hand pushing him to one side as he went down over the edge of the reef. The pressure of the water clawed at his mask as the scooter pulled him down and he swerved as a steel mast pierced the gloom.
He hovered over the tilting deck, considering his next move. The sight of the black, gaping entrance to a companionway decided him He moved inside, switching on the spot which was mounted on top of the scooter.
He moved along the angled corridor and opened the first door he came to. It fell inwards slowly, the room beyond it dark and he was aware of a strange, irrational fear. He pushed forward boldly, and the light, spreading through the water, showed him a table bolted to the floor, a bunk against one wall and bottles and assorted debris floating against the ceiling.