We synchronized the decompression meters strapped to our wrists and snuggled into the face masks. I gave the thumbs-up sign. Head and hands down, Piet nodded to me and Rhennin, gave a smooth kick with his flippers, and vanished beneath the calm surface. I turned to Sheriff's boat, a little way from the dinghy. Mary stood taut, unsmiling. I gave her the thumbs-up sign, too, and went over the side. Using the conventional scissors kick, I eased down slowly to the first air station at three fathoms. Piet was there, hanging on and grinning. The water was not clear and there seemed to be a greenish reflection from the bottom, which puzzled me.
Piet waited five minutes, signalled, and went farther down. The signal line went slack.
Two pulls: are you all right?
Two return pulls: I am all right.
I could see him vaguely but the water seemed full of particles of sand. The line tautened: Piet had started his run-in to the Glory Hole. I waited. There were no fish, which was strange. The line tautened again and then slackened. No point in becoming anxious. Piet was as sound as they come. I wouldn't fluster him with unnecessary signals.
I glanced at my wrist meter. I was nervous, which isn't a good thing under water. I fiddled uneasily with the line, wondering whether I should try Piet for a simply okay. I discarded the idea. I'd rather go down to the next air station at seven fathoms than hang around here close to the surface. We'd have to change over deep, anyway, and five minutes wouldn't make much difference. It was bad Scuba not to stick to schedule. Perhaps the dinghy would wonder what was going on.
I frog-kicked gently, holding the nylon rope as I planed down. The water became greener, murkier. I kept glancing to my left to see whether I could not spot the entrance. A darker patch showed the loom of the island proper.
The signals line gave a savage jerk which almost tore it out of my hand — and then went slack.
Emergency!
I resisted the temptation to strike out for the bottom. Piet wouldn't appreciate a panic, although that tug meant trouble. I waited agonizingly for the series of quick pulls which meant a crisis.
They never came.
Instead, Piet's body- legs, head and arms jack-knifing, convulsing, jerking- floated past me, borne surface-wards by his life-jacket. I caught one glimpse of the face behind the mask: it was a ghastly, death-like travesty of Piet's placid, stolid features. I grabbed, but the rubber-encased body kicked free. God! His rate of ascent alone was enough to kill him! It didn't look like the bends, oxygen starvation, or any of the usual symptoms of a Scuba fault — sting-ray? octopus? scorpion fish? sea snake? catfish? What ever it was, it had been hellish quick. The smoke candle was still at Piet's belt and so was his knife, but the speargun with its buoyant butt was missing.
Piet and I surfaced simultaneously, nausea filling me after the dangerous rate of ascent. He jerked over and over in the water, splashing, thrashing.
I tore off my mask. 'Felix! Bob! Help here!'
The dinghy was a dozen yards away and Sheriff's hydrofoil thirty. I glimpsed Mary's white face. A lifebelt splashed down, out of arm's reach. I ducked under Piet's flailing arms, but his knee mule-kicked me in the chest. His mask was white inside with foam, his own foam. I dived, locking my arms under his shoulders. He gave two or three frightful spasms and then went limp. Holding his head high, I kicked out on my back for Sheriff's boat.
'Get him into the decompression chamber — quick!' I snapped.
'What on earth…?' began Mary.
'Later! Piet is bad…'
Rhennin, who had shot over in the dinghy, said quietly, 'Not bad, John — he's dead.'
I looked over at the lithe, still figure. I couldn't believe it. 'Nonsense!' I tore off the foam-splashed mask and ripped the hood full back behind the ears. I knelt down and listened. There was no breathing. Where his neck joined his shoulder, it was mottled and blotched. I turned him over to apply artificial respiration.
'That man Shelborne…' I cursed softly as I began the rhythmic movements of resuscitation.
Rhennin said, 'Look, John, those blotches mean decompression sickness. He did something down deep he should not have done. He was adventurous…'
'He wasn't a fool,' I panted. 'Piet wouldn't have taken a risk if it was stupid. There's something horrible down there, Felix.'
He looked at me oddly. 'You suffering from diving hallucinations? Seeing things which aren't?'
I paused. Piet remained still, lifeless. 'I wasn't deeper than sixty feet at any stage, and most of the time I was at forty,' I said sharply. 'You're a pretty poor diver if you can't take a hundred, let alone sixty.'
Rhennin repeated. 'Don't go on, John — it's useless. He's dead.' There was a dreadful blue tinge round his mouth.
'Get him over to the Mazy Zed,' I ordered Bob. 'We'll have relays work on him. Warmth, blankets, hot-water bottles…'
Silent, fearful hands helped bring the still figure aboard the mining barge. I was still fresh enough for the first relay! Blankets under him, we stripped him down to trunks. I eased rhythmically up and down, my eyes unable to take themselves from the hideous blotches near his neck. What had done that? I asked myself as many times as I rose and fell. Then I rested, tired, and my eyes lifted for the first time from Piet into the distance beyond Mercury.
I must be drunk from lack of oxygen I told myself — it produces the same effects as alcohol.
The north-eastern side of the bay, between the shore and the neck in the lows hills backing it, was moving, marching.
The desert was marching into the quicksands by the old Portuguese warship. A great, endless dun legion was streaming towards and around the T-shaped white scars.
I dropped my eyes to Piet's blotches. They weren't blurred: I was seeing straight. The Mazy Zed group stood statue-like, staring at my face. I lifted my eyes and gestured with my head.
The tidal wave ashore was white on top, brown underneath. It was not desert. The wave creamed and broke like foam as it hit the water.
A host of springbok, innumerable as the sands of the Namib, threw itself into the sea.
12
The Bells of St Mary's tolled.
Awe-struck, we watched the host of springbok advancing from the desert to the sea, from life to death. They were countless — one might as well have tried to describe a Namib dune in terms of its individual grains. The desert seemed to be powdered with snow shaken from their silver-white manes; their fawn flanks merged with the dunes' own colour. Here and there a scintilla of light sparked where a buck bounded high into the air. This army of living things was changed to a sodden picture of death as the animals threw themselves into the waves. The buck made a peculiar noise, which matched that of the Bells, half a whistle, half a snort, in their final impetus to the beach. This uncanny shout of death rolled across the water, backed by the thunderous diapason of the Bells. Behind the hills the dust hung like fog as the squadrons wheeled, in obedience to some mysterious magnet of self-destruction, and headed for the sea.
Captain Morrell's hills of dead seals! Before our eyes, another great host was destroying itself. Had the same death-dealing force — Shelborne's secret — brushed aside Piet's life, a murder which now seemed paltry by comparison with this demonstration of irresistible power? Would five U-boats also shatter to splinters against the breastplate of this unknown thing?
Mary knelt by me, an arm round my shoulders. 'What was down there under the water, John? Can it be the same killer?' She indicated the buck.