Without a backward glance, he swung over the rail and shinnied down the anchor chain, vastly relieved at departing the ghostly ship. It was a welcome comfort to be in the soothing water again. The sea opened its arms and gave him a sense of remoteness from danger.

It took only a minute for Pitt to slip on his swim trunks and retrieve his diving gear. Fitting an aqualung tank on your back in the darkness with the swells pushing you against the sides of a steel hull isn't an easy operation. But the Ditch and Recovery experience he had obtained during his early diving days came in handy now, and he accomplished the task with little effort. He looked around for the wooden crate, but it had drifted into the black curtain of night and disappeared, the wave action and incoming tide, by this time, carrying it halfway to the beach.

He lay there dead in the water and considered the possibility of diving under the Queen Artemisia and examining her hull. The weird scraping noise he had heard in the engine room seemed to have come from somewhere outside the plates and below the keel. Then it occurred to him the plan was hopeless. Without an underwater light he could see nothing. And he wasn't in the mood to grope like a blind man along a four-hundred-foot hull that was encrusted with razor-sharp barnacles. He'd heard old tales that described in detail the ancient and brutal practice of keelhauling insubordinate British sailors. He remembered one particularly bloodcurdling account of a gunner's mate who was dragged under the keel of the H.M.S. Confident off the coast of Timor in 1786. Punished for stealing a cup of brandy from the captain's locker, the poor fellow was dragged under the keel of the ship until his body was sliced to ribbons and the white of his ribs and backbone were visible. The unfortunate man might have survived, but before the crew could hoist him back on board, a pair of Mako sharks, attracted by the scent of blood, attacked and chewed the man to pieces before the horrified eyes of the men on deck. Pitt knew what a shark could do. He had once pulled a boy from the surf in Key West who had taken a nasty bite by a shark. The boy had lived, but a massive piece of tissue would always be missing from his left thigh.

Pitt cursed out loud. He must stop thinking about things like that. His ears began to ring from a humming sound. At first he thought it was a trick of his imagination. He shook his head violently: it was still there, only louder; it seemed to be gaining momentum. Then Pitt knew where the humming was coming from.