The Nautical Chart (52 page)

THE
water was very cold, too cold for the time of year. Maps of the currents indicated a gentle flow from northeast to southwest, with a difference of five or six degrees compared to the general temperature of the water. Coy felt his skin contract with the unpleasant sensation of cold water beneath his neoprene vest; it would take a few minutes to warm to his body temperature. He took a couple of slow, deep breaths to test the regulator. With his head half out of the water he could see El Piloto standing there over the stern of the
Carpanta.
He sank down a little, looking around at the blue panorama surrounding him. Near the surface, with the sun's rays lighting the clear, quiet water, there was good visibility. About thirty feet, he calculated. He could see the black keel of the
Carpanta,
with its rudder turned to port and the chain of the anchor descending vertically into the depths. Tanger was swimming nearby, with gentle thrusts of her orange plastic fins. Putting her out of his mind, he concentrated on what he was doing. He looked down to where the blue became darker and more intense, verified the position of the hands on his watch, and began the slow descent toward the bottom. The sound of the air as he breathed through the regulator was deafening, and when the needle of the depth gauge showed fifteen feet, he stopped and pinched his nose beneath the mask, to adapt to the increased pressure on his ears. As he did that, he raised the mask, relieved, and saw bubbles rising from his last exhalation. The sun had turned the surface of the sea into a ceiling of shimmering silver. The black hull of the
Carpanta
was overhead. Tanger had dived to swim slightly above him, and was looking at him through her mask, her blond hair floating in the water, her slim legs, extended by the fins, treading slowly to maintain her depth near Coy. When he breathed again, another plume of bubbles ascended toward her, and she waved her hand in salute. Then Coy looked down and continued his slow descent through a blue sphere that closed above his head, darkening as he neared the bottom. He made a second stop to compensate for the pressure when the gauge marked forty-six feet. Now the water was a translucid sphere that extinguished all colors but green. He was at that intermediate point where divers, with no point of reference, can become disoriented and suddenly find themselves contemplating bubbles that seem to be falling rather than rising; only logic, if in fact they retain that, reminds them that a bubble of air always rises upward. But he hadn't yet reached that extreme. Shapes began to emerge from the darkness on the floor beneath him, and moments later Coy fell very slowly onto a bed of pale, cold sand near a thick meadow of sea anemones, posidonias, and tall, grasslike seaweed enlivened by darting schools of ghostly fish. The depth meter indicated sixty feet. Coy looked around him through the half-light. Vision was good, and the mild current cleared the water. Within a radius of sixteen to twenty-three feet he could easily make out a landscape of starfish, empty seashells, large spade-shaped bivalves standing upright in the sand, and, marking the boundaries of the submarine meadow, ridges of stone with rudimentary coral formations. Small microorganisms floated past him, pulled by the current. He knew that if he turned on his light, color would return to all those monotone objects magnified through the shatterproof glass of his mask. He breathed deliberately several times, trying to adapt his lungs to the pressure and to oxygenate his blood, and checked his bearings on the compass. His plan was to move fifty or seventy feet to the south and then trace a circle around the
Carpanta's
anchor, which was to the north, behind him. He began to swim slowly, with gentle movements of his legs and fins, hands at his sides, about a yard above the bottom. His eyes searched the sand, alert for the slightest sign of something buried beneath it—although the bronze guns, Tanger had insisted, had to be exposed. He swam to the edge of the meadow and peered into the seaweed and undulating blades. If there was anything in that thicket it was going to be difficult to find, so he decided to continue exploring the area of bare sand which, though it seemed flat, actually descended in a gentle slope to the southwest, as he confirmed with the depth meter and compass. He was inhaling and exhaling every five seconds, and the sound of air was interspersed with intervals of absolute silence. He concentrated on moving slowly, reducing his physical effort to a minimum. The slower the breathing rhythm, the less air consumption and fatigue, went the old divers' rule, and the more available reserves. And this was going to take a while. With lobsters or without them, this was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Coy saw some dark patches on the sand and went closer to give them a look. Shingle and half-buried rocks covered with small seaweed. A little farther on he found the first object connected with life on the surface, a rusted tin can. He continued at a controlled pace, moving his head from left to right, and stopped when he calculated he had reached the edge of the radius of the circle he intended to search around the anchor. Then he oriented himself again and began to swim in an arc to his right. He was about to cross from the sandy bed to the rocks that marked the limits of the meadow when he spied a shadow a little farther away, almost at the edge of his field of vision. He went to it and found, to his disappointment, that it was a round rock covered with limy formations. Too round and too perfect, it occurred to him suddenly. He lifted it a little, raising a cloud of sand from the bottom, and the rock turned out to be surprisingly light as it broke apart in his hands, revealing a gray-green interior not unlike rotted wood. Astounded, Coy was slow to comprehend that it was exactly that— old, rotted wood. Maybe the wheel of a gun carriage. He felt his heart beating faster beneath the neoprene. His breathing was less tranquil now, and the rate rose to three mouthfuls every five seconds as he scratched in vain in the sand. The digging raised such a cloud from the bottom that he had to rise up a little to find clear water and continue looking. That was when he saw the first gun.

HE
swam toward it, kicking very slowly, as if he feared that the large mass of bronze would deteriorate before his eyes like the wooden wheel. It was about five feet in length, and lay on the bottom as if someone had deposited it there with great care. It was almost entirely exposed, with a mossy film and a few incrustations, but the dolphin designs on the handles, the ball of the cascabel on the breech, and the heavy trunnions were all perfectly recognizable. It must weigh nearly a ton.

A little farther away he could make out the dark shadow of another gun. He swam to it and saw that it was identical, although in a different position. This one must have fallen almost straight down, diving mouth-first onto the ocean floor, its weight drilling it up to the trunnions in sand. There were also curious reddish stones around, which, when Coy cut them open, showed empty interiors like molds. Of course, he thought. When iron corrodes it leaves an imperfect copy of its shape in the limy formation that has covered it over time. Coy had to discipline himself not to shoot to the surface and shout the news. He had found the
Chergui,
or what remained of her. Instead, he fanned away sand, revealing wood fragments and objects better preserved because they were protected by the sand. He unearthed a bottle that appeared to be very old, its base intact but deformed. Melted, Coy was sure, by extreme heat. The corsair xebec, he concluded, had blown up precisely here, sixty-five feet overhead, and its remains were scattered over the bottom. A little farther on, close together, he found two more guns. They too had the green tone of bronze submerged for two and a half centuries, and were reasonably clean except for a few incrustations and the mossy coating. Now there was a lot of wreckage: wood protruding from the sand, metal objects in varying stages of corrosion, half-buried cannonballs, shards of clay, and shattered wood planking with iron nails. Coy even found a nearly intact wooden construction, which as he scooped away sand appeared to be larger and in better condition than he had thought at first sight. It looked as if it might be a sailmaker's table, with large deadeyes and bits of cordage that disintegrated as he touched them. And more guns. He counted nine, spread in an area some one hundred feet in diameter.

He was amazed at how clean everything was, and at the lack of more than a thin layer of sediment on the wreckage. The gentle, cold current flowing southwest might be one explanation; it had kept the site dear, emptying into a basin a little lower down and behind a low rocky ridge covered with anemones. Coy swam there to be sure, and could see that the depression, in the shape of a natural gully, drained off the sediment by directing it toward a series of terraces stepping down to deeper levels. An octopus, surprised in its den, skittered along the sand, its tentacles opened in the shape of an undulating star, shooting streams of ink to cover its retreat. Coy consulted his watch. It was getting more difficult to breathe, so he looked up toward the diffuse blue-green light above his head, pierced by silver bubbles. It was time to go back. He turned the valve at the base of the bottle to activate the reserve, and his lungs filled with air.

He was starting his ascent when he spotted the anchor. It lay at the edge of a second rocky, eroded ridge on the other side of the gully It was large and it was old, its rusted iron flukes covered with crusts of lime.. Both the anchor and the anemone-covered ridge held tangled remnants of old nets and rotted woven traps; over time, many fishermen had snagged their equipment here. But what caught his attention was that the anchor had a wooden shank, although the wood had rotted away and all that was left were a few splinters beneath the anchor ring. It was an anchor the xebec or the brigantine would have carried, and that encouraged Coy to cross the gully, swim around the ridge, and go closer, using the last minutes of his air reserve. On the other side of the rocks, sand alternated with a bed of shingle. The depression was more pronounced, varying from eighty to ninety feet in depth. And there, in the green darkness, looming in the depths like a ghostly dark shadow, was the
Dei Gloria.

XV

The Devil's Irises

Everything found in the sea that has no owner belongs to the finder.

FRANCISCO
COLOANE
,
El camino de la ballena

In short, nervous musical phrases, the alto was improvising as no one had ever done. "Ko-ko" was playing, one of the themes Charlie Parker had recorded when he had invented everything he was destined to invent before rotting and exploding in a laughing fit. And in that order—first he rotted and then he died laughing, watching television. That had happened half a century ago, and now Coy was in his room in the Cartago Inn. The window offered a rainswept view of the port, and he was sitting naked in a rocking chair, a tray of fruit on the table beside him, listening to the digitalized recording of that old cut. Be-do-be-dooo. Toomb, toomb. Be-bop. Coy was holding a botrie of lemonade and watching Tanger sleep.

It was raining on the port, on derricks, wharves, and Navy ships berthed two by two alongside the San Pedro dock, and on the rusting hulls in the Graveyard of Ships With No Name, where the
Carpanta
was moored by the stern to the mole with an anchor at the bow. It was pouring buckets because the storm had finally arrived.

That had been arranged from the headquarters of the low-pressure system located over Ireland and spreading evilly outward in concentric, closely drawn isobars. Strong winds from.the west were pushing successive fronts in the direction of the Mediterranean, weather maps were covered with black warnings and thunderbolts and signs of rain, and the coasts were pierced by arrows with wispy fletchings in the shaft, aimed at the heart of unwary ships. So that after three days of working at the site of the shipwreck, the crew of the
Carpanta
found themselves obliged to return to port. Despite Tanger's impatience, she agreed that they could use the break to plan the last stages of the search, and to obtain the equipment they needed before a final assault on the secrets of that underwater tomb. The
Dei Gbria's
tomb was now definitively situated two miles off the coast, at 37°33.3,N and 0°46.8,W. with her stern at eighty-five feet and her bow at ninety-two.

For several days, during which they lived with one eye on the sea and the other on the barometer, Tanger had directed the operation from the
Carpanta's
cabin. Coy and El Piloto worked hard, taking turns below in spans of thirty to forty minutes, with intervals long enough to make long decompressions unnecessary. They had discovered in their earliest explorations that the ship was in good condition, considering the two and a half centuries she'd lain beneath the sea. She had gone down bow-first, losing one of her anchors on the rocky ridge before settling onto the bottom on a northeast-southwest axis. The hull, resting on its starboard side, was buried in sand and sediment to the waist. The deck was rotted and covered with marine life, but still intact at the stern. Toward the bow, the planking and beams of the deck were missing, and some of the frames protruded from the sand, recalling the ribs of a skeleton. When Coy and El Piloto explored the rest of the
Dei Gloria
on subsequent dives, they established that the aft third of the ship was clear of debris, and that the damage would have been more major in other waters and in a different position. The waist seemed to be buried beneath a tangle of wood, clusters of iron powdery from corrosion, sand, and sediment that grew deeper as you approached the crushed and buried bow. It was obvious that the ten iron guns on deck and all other heavy objects had shifted forward as the brigantine started down, and that over time the deck planking had caved in under their weight, disappearing beneath the sand. That was why the stern was a little higher and had sustained less damage, although many beams and ribs had yielded to the years, and sand had piled up in the rotten timberwork. They saw the stump of the mainmast, which had been blasted off during battle, as well as a pyramid of planks, petrified in the shape of the companion, two gun ports on the port gunnel, and the sternpost, still held by bronze pins, rusty and full of filaments and incrustations, and the remains of the rudder stock.