After a short lunch of red rice and jackfruit curry eaten out of a banana leaf on the sweltering skiff, Tusker wriggled back into his damp wetsuit and spat in his mask. Raj would take Ian back to the dock while Upali and Tusker were underwater, returning with the skiff. They bade farewell to Ian, heaved their air cylinders onto their backs and backrolled off opposite gunwales. The commotion scattered a group of gulls floating nearby. As soon as they reached the bottom, Tusker heard the outboard motor start up and watched the silhouette of the boat swing around and disappear.

Upali and Tusker spread out, picking around the search area they’d marked with yellow flags, probing the deep silt with wire probes, stopping to mark promising spots with red flags.

Next week, best bring the metal detector and some hand tools to investigate all these. Tusker mentally prepped for next week to fill the monotony. Wouldn’t Upali be jealous if I find something while he’s over on the east coast. He smiled to himself.

At four o’clock, after two more tank swaps, they were ready to call it a day. The sun dropped like a stone in the tropics, meaning it would be dark in two hours. Underwater, it was already getting hard to see in the late afternoon light. Probing, flagging and digging was monotonous, exhausting work, especially while sucking dry, compressed air. Despite the bathtub warm water, Tusker was thoroughly chilled.

Raj, whose day sitting in the skiff under the hot sun had been no less arduous, helped them heave their gear into the boat. They motored across the crowded harbor to a dock. Tusker tugged on the faded red Mount Gay Rum baseball cap he’d gotten while crewing in the Chicago-Mackinac regatta years ago. Along with the old Aquastar diving watch, it was one of his few prized possessions, and he held on to the brim tightly as Raj gunned the little boat across the water.

“All in a day’s work, eh, machang?” Upali shouted over the motor, using the Sinhala term for “mate.”

“It never felt this hard when we were doing site surveys up in Lake Superior!” Tusker replied, pausing to smear a forearm across his damp brow.

“But at least there’s no risk of frostbite here!” Upali said. They both laughed.

“The legend lives on, from the Chippewa on down, of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee…” Upali broke into song, starting an off-key rendition of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Tusker joined in and they belted out the rest of Gordon Lightfoot’s famous song about the sinking of a ship in Lake Superior. Raj watched them with an amused grin.

At the dock, the three of them loaded a rickety cart and pushed it slowly up the dock, its rusty steel wheels protesting under the weight of the scuba tanks, weight belts, and the soaking-wet gear.