Like Spiders
Lying on its side it was. Stokes preferred to approach the French ship from above where she could see its full profile. The magnificent Napoleonic galleon lay firmly on the floor of the lake. Dead in the water, but still stately and intact. Even a couple of the masts were intact, stripped of any sail fabric by hidden tides and the innocent activity of swimming fish.
"The ship's a distraction." Their Texan team leader had tried to keep all the undersea activity under control. "We test the kit. Make it perform as best we can."
The main point of the science mission was to test out the little flat sub that Vauxhall had acquired thru his myriad connections. But the nominal reason – the reason given in tame press releases - was to investigate the old wreck; a wooden vessel that had eluded the British and defeated the ice, only to meet its fate at the hands of its own crew.
"There's no need to swim around there on your own, Miss Stokes," Weed had warned. "The saucer'll be fixed in a week, ten days. You could use the kiddie-car if you want until then."
Stokes had ignored him, and his fake politeness, pulled on the mask and rebreather and let herself fall back into the water of the lake. Vauxhall, recovering after crashing the saucer into the rocks, had stocked out the equipment chests with short and stubby swim-fins – no doubt of nefarious military provenance - but Stokes had brought her own fins, long and elegant, allowing her to move in the water with subtlety and instinct.
"Now stay away from the French wreck," he had instructed when she first mooted a solo drive. "The currents are stronger than you might think." Stokes did not need to be told how and where to dive, but she nodded that she had heard what he said.
The wreck lay in a relatively flat ledge of rock and sand at thirty feet. What particularly fascinated her, what everyone else missed, were the empty walls of the vessel. She knew from actually researching the ship that painted and carved wood panels should have hung on the bowsprit as a mark of authority. Now it was blank and empty; a flagship vessel with no character.
The other divers, the men, all noticed the portholes for the rows of cannon, still opening up from the tilted wall, some of the pieces appearing still ready to fire even in the water. "Ready to fight," Weed had described it, like he felt pirate blood in his veins. "Always ready to spring on their prey."
Significantly, however, this particular predator had fled a battle with the British and made a ludicrous detour to this secluded lake and, ultimately, the bottom of the water. But such academic conclusions were largely ignored, based not on her own researches, but overheard in muffled conversations at very stuffy dinner tables.
"If you don't like my jokes, just ignore them." Weed was very competent at what he did. His experience ranged from frozen wastes to sweaty overheating forests. But he was a 'people' person in only one way. If you liked him instantly, he liked you instantly. Everyone else was written off. Stokes wondered if he considered it 'compromise' to understand other people.
As she descended to the shoulder of bedrock that the wreck lay on, the current swirled around her and started to channel into strong lines that forced her in a downward direction. The best tactic was to swim with the water and cut across the stream in the general direction she wanted. She let herself head down to the wreck with added speed and drift firmly toward the tilted deck. From a previous visit she knew that the current at that tilted face was virtually zero and the handholds to hold her in place were good.
"I saw a local get sucked into a whirlpool in Oahu. He had the tanks, weights, everything. We got him back with a bell a couple of days later. But it was way too late. The fish had got him too." Weed relished the telling of this tale, leering at the grisly idea of a marine demise. Stokes did not deny that the story might be true, or even that it might have some dramatic appeal. But Weed's careful nursing of the tale's details unsettled her.
Stokes firmly gripped the uneven wooden surface and pulled herself along the deck of the ship searching for a calm spot to rest in. Towards the stern, in a striking pillar of light from the surface, she paused near the remains of the rudder. Tiny waves of fish were sweeping along the contours of the boat like little birds on warm sand. For a few seconds, it was a beautiful place to be. But beauty was often fleeting and in this particular place it was dangerous to linger.
"Ghosts!" Weed had attempted to unsettle her on their first meeting by shouting out across the boat-shed as she stepped off the little rigid inflatable. "Let's go ghost hunting. Under the sea!" Her immediate assessment of his amateur presentation did not change over the subsequent months.
Now, here, under the sea, she felt that perhaps his foolish promise was a little easier to believe. With her hand on a two-hundred-year-old vessel, the distance from here to there was virtually non-existent. She crept further along the hull and slunk around to the deck. After a few minutes she found a steady spot and took some photographs. The view down the length of the ship, from stem to stern, was particularly dramatic in the low light.
"And watch out for the monster," he had warned. Stokes smiled within her mask. Pretty much anything with an attitude was a 'monster' at this depth. That was part of the thrill. Something tiny might be easy to fend off; something massive might miss her entirely. What lay between might prove tricky.
So as she watched a pair of electric lamp-lights descend toward her she wondered how this particular unknown might take to her.