As soon as she left the harbor The Rapture turned on her power and was at the horizon and out of sight in a few moments.

At last those of us aboard the Bull Shark were on our legal way. We anchored about a mile from a deserted rocky island.

“Thirty foot depth,” Jim reported.

“What does that mean, thirty feet? Am I going down here?” I asked Gun.

“What did I tell you?” Gun replied, quizzing me with his look.

Anxious, I recited the fundamentals and we went over the hand signals.

Joni walked by with a big smile. “Are you going down with us?”

Carl had an excited on-the-hunt expression. “Yeah, go down with us!”

“I’m taking ‘Ca-leb, mah belle’ down the anchor line,” Gun answered on my behalf. “See how he does with that first.” Gun made a skeptical eyebrow movement. “Go ahead, get your gear,” he ordered. “Make sure your tank is ready to use.”

My adrenaline unleashed to flow free. I assembled my dive gear, the belt, weights, fins. Next, I searched a rack of scuba tanks for signs that one of them was ready to use. The air valves were all taped over.

Joni saw me. “Is this really your first dive?” she asked. “Here, try this one!” She pulled out the tank right in front of my nose and laughed. “Tape means they’re ready!” Then, she added, “Here, impress Gun with all you know. Make sure the breathing hose is over the right shoulder.”

“Right. Right shoulder. Okay.” I confirmed by doing it. Joni showed me how to connect the regulator hose to the tank. Being so close she smelled fine, pleasant, not fishy or sweaty, and I couldn’t help notice her teeth and mouth were also fine.

“So, you are going down the anchor line with Gun?” she repeated, and pulled very hard to tighten one of my straps.

“I’m supposed to.” I was breathing fast, too fast.

Gun came by as Joni was leaving. He checked the hookup. “Not bad, Ca-leb, mah belle.” He chuckled at the fun he had with my name.

“Joni helped.”

“Look, here’s your mask.” He handed me a stained rubber mask with dirt crusts and decomposing sea matter. “Just spit in it. Rub it all around, and follow me into the water. Your weight belt is on backward, don’t worry about it now.”

As soon as I chomped down hard on the regulator mouthpiece and Gun confirmed that I was breathing through the hose, he shoved me back-first into the sea. I tumbled over underwater, and many bubbles bubbled up around my ears as I started breathing only in and out of my mouth. So far so good, then the mask flooded with water and I panicked, pumping my hands and legs until I realized it wasn’t a life-threatening situation yet. I continued to breathe, tasting salt water. Gun was beside me and he held my body up so that my head was sustained above the waves.

He shouted, “Put the mask back on! And stop thrashing your stupid hands and feet! You look like a mouse with a weight belt on!”

I imagined myself this plump creature with a big belt dragging me down, limbs flailing away and splashing the water helpless. Salt water lapped over my face and lips but I chewed the regulator, repositioned the mask and accompanied by Gun followed the contour of the hull to the bow anchor line, where we began going down. Gun studied my breathing and continued to check with me, signaling me to equalize ear pressure by pinching the nostrils and leading me along the thick braided cord to the anchor on the bottom.

Made of nylon that was frayed in places, I clutched the slimy anchor line and bit hard on the mouthpiece like they meant life itself, pulling myself farther into cooler water, concentrating on breathing only in and out of the mouth and never holding my breath which I instinctively wanted to do underwater. What I didn’t want to know was what would happen if I did hold my breath. The facemask continued to fill up with water, and Gun motioned for me to throw back my head and blow out of my nose to drain it, which I did, though I feared it wouldn’t work and there would be more water inside than before.

I kept an extra tight hold of the anchor line so if it didn’t work I could make it back up without much concern. But the mask emptied, all the water was sucked out and suddenly I could see what was going on around me. Everything was crispy clear. I was doing it all, breathing underwater almost as comfortably as on land, water running through the ear canals without trouble, and I could deal with incidents like the mask flooding. I spotted the hull’s shadow straight up above me. And below me now, just a feet away were innumerable colorful rocks—corals—while hundreds of fish of every size and shape swam about. For a moment I was able to place survival aside and appreciate this incredible peak event in my life! Gun tapped me to give the okay sign, pointing at the ocean bottom for me to stay right there.

Unlike aquariums, there were immense schools of fish resembling underwater clouds. This was fantastic! Dazzling! Religious phrases crossed my mind, verses about God and the universe of life and other things… The color of my hands and everything else shifted along the spectrum of diminishing light. On the bottom my skin looked blanched like the “real estate white” paint developers use to hide imperfections, while just a few feet closer to the surface the colors were almost normal. Then, sharp booming sounds crackled around me, and I couldn’t tell where they were coming from. They were blasting shocks which killed the perfect moments I was experiencing.

I had settled on the bottom where the anchor was lodged in a sandy fish-filled furrow between two six-foot high reef banks. Equalizing pressure one last time, I tried to calm my humming heart with even breathing, amazed each moment by the astonishing, alien surroundings. I could not be any more excited if I were Alice entering Wonderland, or the first explorer on another planet!

Every little fish was awesome! This was unimaginable, every other moment together in my live was not worth this one! Some fish looked like sticks and swam vertically like wriggling pencils. Larger red fish came up to my mask and checked me out, eyeball to eyeball.

Soon I was able to relax while gripping the heavy coiled anchor line for security. This was so super cool. I kept checking the air gauge. My mask and breathing had stabilized.

Wow! Hey! I thought. Yeah, I like it down here, a person could get used to this view of the world. Giant turtles cruised over to inspect the anchor. In fact many fish seemed fascinated by the anchor line, and nibbled at it. Gun tapped me again and indicated by signals that when my air reached five-hundred Pounds per Square Inch to begin a gradual ascent, and until then not to leave the spot I was in. I signaled that was fine with me.

I went back and forth, thinking, Hey, I did it! I did it! This was when I had to watch out more than ever, when things were going so great. I checked in with myself again, how was I doing? I was becoming concerned, thinking, Enough. Please get me out of here. I want to go back now.

The surroundings were thick with fish. Another turtle came over to where the anchor lay caught on the bottom and examined the area, perhaps curious about this large foreign object in the very place where the corals were destroyed. As I looked up fish seemed to gather in swirls up and down the anchor line, sometimes engulfing me! The line had a very slippery feeling in the hands and greenish areas that must be algae which those small fish were feeding on. The line attracted so many fish I often couldn’t see through them and almost panicked, but letting go of the line or being carried off by the current might leave me disoriented and out of control, nothing good could come of that.

Joni and Gun hammered parts of the reef with their explosive sticks and stuffed the rocks into mesh sacks. The bursts of wracking underwater noise dulled my hearing. I hated to believe they were poaching. The water pressure caused a strange feeling of discomfort in my ears, yet they were fully equalized; it was the correct sensation except for the extra strain of the explosions. Still, I gawked at the colors of the corals and movements of fish around me. I feared eels and thousand-pound sharks cruising nearby or coming out of nowhere. What would I do anyway if a shark did attack? I’d never escape. I had to pray someone with a spear gun would save me. At any given moment I was a heartbeat away from having my significant pieces bitten off.

Ally was armed with a couple plastic-enclosed cameras and took footage of the pristine environment while avoiding the other divers. She had nothing on except fins and a tiny thong bikini with her sleek body gliding by—not just the natural scenery was heavenly. Then it became silent everywhere around me, and I listened to my own bubbles blowing, and the sucking air noise of heavy breathing inside my mask like Darth Vader. I heard soothing celestial harmonies in my mind. This was way beyond earthly existence or even a dream, it was like a tour through Paradise or a world I shouldn’t be in but was allowed to visit briefly. The strangeness was total, hearing, seeing, moving, everything differed from normal life including breathing itself. Surely, some part of heaven must resemble this spectacular world.

While I imagined heaven, a brilliant little fish dashed by my mask, chased by a larger gray one. The small fish darted and weaved valiantly, but was gulped up whole. Big Carl in his tiger-striped suit was nearby, and he lanced a fat fish that trusted him enough to get close. Then another, then another. He had them skewered on his spear in death throes, and held out a camera to snap a picture of them and him together.

Awestruck—that was my state of being for whatever period it was. Gun returned and indicated to check my air supply. Five-hundred PSI! I was down to my reserves. Time disappeared, temporarily losing all significance.

I felt glorious, but regained my focus and ascended slowly, feeling decompression and compensating along the way. Reaching out for the hull, I floated aft so excited that I made several procedural mistakes such as taking my weight belt off first without having a grip on the boat, and letting my head drift under the stern diving platform where it might gash my skull open. Gun hauled my body onto the diving platform like a twig he plucked from the sea.

“Not bad, Caleb,” he said with encouragement. “Not too bad. You remembered to breathe.”

I gasped, salt water pouring off my face. “Yeah? Did I do okay? How long was I down there?”

“You did fine. You were down there forty minutes.” He made a quick eyebrow movement like surprise and approval.

Ally added in her excited drawl, “I teach scuba classes, and what you just did down there my students who’ve taken twelve classes can’t even do!”

It filled me with pride and elation. “You’re kidding?”

“No, she’s right,” Joni said. “I teach water safety for lifeguards, too. It was amazing what you just did, not knowing anything!”

Everyone agreed without reservation. Joni charted their dives on a board but I was so ecstatic it was not expressible.

“What is this chart?” I asked her. Colored boxes followed the names of all the divers, and she was adding my name. “I’ll keep track of your Bottom Time. Forty minutes. Nitrogen builds up in your blood when you’re underwater and takes time to get rid of. It’s only important when you’re doing more than one dive per day.” She was nice, but I still couldn’t get over her killing the coral.

The afternoon was perfect, light breeze, clear sky and calm sea. At last I had my “sea legs” and was getting around the boat without clinging to the rails.

“So, Caleb, what ‘re you be doing here?” Carl joked in his best pirate voice. “Would you be doin’ some of that ol’ treasure hunting?”

“Would you believe that’s the second time someone asked me that? Nope.” I grinned. “Is there really treasure down there?”

“Morgan, the Welsh pirate,” Gun replied. “They say his treasure’s buried down in one of the Blue Holes.”

“Blue Holes?” echoed Joni. “Aren’t we going there?”

“That’s Andros Island. We’re all Bimini on this trip.”

“But I wanted to go to Andros, too.” Joni’s voice had a disappointed twang.

“There’s treasure down there for sure, Caleb me boy,” said Carl. His pointy shaved head was always beading with moisture. “Two billion was recovered from the Maravillas wreck.”

“I never heard about that,” I said.

“Never heard because it was a secret salvage operation,” Gun informed me.

“They put security blanket over the whole thing,” Jim continued. “The navies of a couple countries were involved to protect the site.”

“Happens a lot now,” added Gun.

“Two billion...” I repeated. “That’s....”

“Yeah, that’s two thousand million dollars,” Carl said.

I nodded, amazed. “So, there really is treasure down there.”

“Oh, just try to keep it if you find it,” Jimmy remarked.

“Several countries always fighting over the spoils now.” Gun’s eyebrows went up like it was a big problem.

“Don’t worry, you’ll see a History Channel special when it’s decided,” Joni told me.

***