Water began to dribble into the Rat Hat as the gas remaining in the hose was used up.
Holding his breath, he climbed out of his hiding place and snapped the hose from the bailout bottle to the intake valve on his helmet.
The metallic tang of heliox. But for how long? At this depth and pressure, gas was gone in the blink of an eye. This tank might last an hour on the surface. But here at twenty-two atmospheres — he did the math — less than three minutes. If he couldn’t get to the bell in that time, he would die.
He paddled out of the cave, legs kicking madly. He would have given anything for a pair of flippers. But there was no time to think about that now.
There it was — the bell, glowing like a distant diamond off to his left. He pointed the Rat Hat in its direction and kicked for his life. Maximum speed on minimum heliox — that’s what he needed.
He was breathing too fast, he was sure.
But I can make it!
A dark shape moved in front of the gleaming sphere of the bell. Kaz’s hope disintegrated in a puff of precious gas. Tin Man! Marina Kappas stood in the sand of the shelf between him and his goal.
It all came clear. Marina had cut his umbilical to bring him out of hiding. And now he was swimming right into the clutches of Tin Man’s powerful hydraulics. It was virtual suicide. But he had no choice. He was already running low on gas. All he could do was make for the bell.
And pray.
Another half breath, and the tank went bone-dry. Kaz swallowed hard and stroked on.
Tin Man’s armored limb swung out to meet him. The claw opened, ready to strike.
A wall of water moved, and the tiger shark was upon them, exploding out of the darkness.
Kaz went rigid, and the mechanical pincers missed him by inches. Clarence’s titanic maw yawned open and snapped shut on Tin Man’s aluminum plating. A single jagged tooth found a weak spot in the knee joint. It knifed between two pieces of metal, penetrating the suit’s one-atmosphere seal.
There was a pop, and the weight of seven hundred feet of ocean blasted into Tin Man with the force of a battering ram. Marina never had a chance to scream. She was crushed to death in an instant.
A pectoral fin the size of a car door smacked into the empty tank on Kaz’s back, sending him careening. By the time he’d recovered, his vision was darkening at the edges. He needed to breathe, needed it now. He could already feel himself slipping into a void far darker than the depths.
A thought came to him, one that he assumed would be his last: He had survived Tin Man, had even survived Clarence, only to suffocate just a few feet from the open hatch of the bell.
Something below him in the water was pushing him upward. With a burst of strength that was barely human, Menasce Gérard heaved him in through the work-lock. Limply, Kaz crashed to a pile of wet umbilicals on the curved floor.
Adriana and Dante yanked off his helmet.
Bobby Kaczinski took the sweetest breath he would ever remember.
08 September 1665
Captain James Blade came to regret his decision to have his Spanish prisoners put to death. This was not out of any sense of compassion. Rather, he now realized that he could have used them as slave labor to move the enormous treasure from Nuestra Señora to the barque.
The treasure. For the likes of Samuel Higgins, who had never held in his threadbare pockets more than a few coppers, the galleon’s hold was the king’s counting house. There could not possibly be more wealth in all the world. The gleaming silver pieces of eight made a mountain thrice the height of the tallest man aboard the Griffin. There were enough gold bricks to build a palace. Pearls and gemstones spilled out of huge chests. Just the loose objects on the deck planking, lying where they had fallen like so much garbage, would have bought and sold empires.
The gold bricks were the heaviest. Each one seemed to weigh four times what it should have, and even the smallest armload was almost too much for the exhausted and wounded privateers. Only forty men remained. Of their number, five were too grievously injured to work. One thing was certain, though. There would be no amputations now. York the barber had fallen in the battle for Nuestra Señora, a musket ball having pierced his heart.
Samuel thanked God that the bone-handled whip had been flung into the sea, for surely they all would have tasted it at some point during their labors. The work was slow, and the captain was not a patient man.
As the sun rose high over the yardarm and then began to set, Blade stood by the makeshift gangway that connected the Griffin to the much higher deck of the galleon. From that vantage point, he took stock of every coin and candlestick, cursing and berating the seamen who bore the burden of his newfound riches.
“Stir your stumps, you lice-ridden scum! I intend to be many days from here when the Spanish fleet comes looking for this rubbish barge!”
The captain would not even take the time to move the treasure below to the barque’s hold, so anxious was he to be away. With the wealth of the East and the New World piled about the deck among coiled lines and water barrels, he gave the order to set fire to Nuestra Señora de la Luz.
Dusk was falling as the Griffin pulled away from the blazing galleon. James Blade straddled his deck, chortling with triumph.
“Aye, Lucky is the name for you, boy. Fortune smiled upon me the day you came aboard this vessel.”
A figure suddenly appeared amid the smoke of the burning ship. The Spaniard was not much older than Samuel, a cabin boy who had hidden himself deep in the galleon’s many lower decks.
With a howl of defiance, the boy twirled a smoking ceramic firepot in a sling over his head. And then the flaming weapon was flung into the air, a streak of orange in the darkening sky. Every soul aboard the Griffin saw it, and yet it could not be stopped. It struck the deck not ten feet from Captain Blade and Samuel. As the earthenware pot shattered, the burning matchsticks ignited the packed gunpowder at its core.
There was a sharp report as the device exploded, spraying hot pitch in all directions. Cries of pain went up among the crew as the searing brimstone splashed onto exposed flesh. Samuel felt a hot stab on his beardless cheek. The captain bellowed in agonized fury.
As the embers flew, a single fleck of fiery sulfur found the collapsed area of deck in the barque’s stern. Directly below were stored the ship’s powder kegs.
No attacking navy could have had the effect of that single speck of flame as it settled upon the vola-tile barrel stacked among two and twenty others.
The Griffin blew herself to pieces. In a matter of seconds, Samuel found himself in the water. It was that sudden.
Like most of the crew, he could not swim. He floundered in the waves, splashing wildly for just a few seconds before dipping beneath them.
This is it, then, he thought. What a strange place for an English climbing boy to end his life.
That life had not been a happy one. Yet as he sank deeper into the blackness, he realized wistfully how very much he wanted to live.
Suddenly, he was struck in the chest by a hard object rising from below. Instinctively, he clasped his arms around it, and it bore him upward. He broke to the surface, gasping and choking, and stared at the object that was keeping him afloat. It was a piece of the ship’s carved figurehead, broken off in the explosion.