The Reef

scanning the disturbed area for exposed worms. If one got lucky, dozens of others would rush in to search for food in a colorful flood of motion.
    At his usual distance, the barracuda remained like a statue, looking on in grinning approval.
    Matthew ran the lift like an artist, Tate thought. Probing here, then shifting with a delicacy that seemed to remove sand a grain at a time. He brushed away silt clouds with a wave of the pipe. If the wall of sand was parted by an object, he would back off the pipe, work carefully to prevent damage.
    She saw with dazzled eyes a fragile piece of porcelain, a bowl with elegant rosebuds rimming its cup.
    He would have left it for the time being, knowing that something that fragile when cemented to coral or some other object could be snapped off at the slightest touch.
    But her eyes were so big with wonder, so bright with delight. He wanted to give her the bowl, see her face when she held it. Signaling her back, Matthew began the tedious and time-consuming process of whispering the sand clear. When he was satisfied, he handed her the pipe. Reaching below the bowl to the coral that had claimed it, Matthew worked it free.
    It cost him some skin, but when he offered it to her, the nicks and scratches were forgotten. Her eyes glowed, then filled so unexpectedly both of them stared. Disconcerted, Matthew took the pipe back, jerked a thumb to the surface. He cracked the valve on the airlift, released a torrent of bubbles. Together, they swam up in the spray.
    She didn’t speak, couldn’t. Grateful they were hampered by the airlift and her last bucket of conglomerate, she reached the side of the Adventure. Her father beamed over the side.
    “You’ve been keeping us busy.” He’d pitched his voice over the roar of the compressor, winced when Buck shutit off. “We’ve got dozens of artifacts, Tate.” He hauled up the bucket she held out. “Spoons, forks, buckets, copper coins, buttons . . .” He trailed off when she held up the bowl. “My God. Porcelain. Unbroken. Marla.” His voice cracked on the name. “Marla, come over here and look at this.”
    Reverently, Ray took the bowl from Tate. By the time she and Matthew had gotten aboard, Marla was sitting on deck, surrounded by debris, the flowered bowl in her lap, her video camera beside her.
    “Pretty piece,” Buck commented. However casual the words, his voice betrayed his excitement.
    “Tate liked it.” Matthew glanced toward her. She was standing in her wet suit, the tears that had threatened forty feet below flowing freely.
    “There are so many things,” she managed. “Dad, you can’t imagine. Under the sand. All these years under the sand. Then you find them. Something like this.” After rubbing the heels of her hands over her face, she crouched by her mother, dared to skim a gentle fingertip over the rim of the bowl. “Not a chip. It survived a hurricane and more than two hundred and fifty years, and it’s perfect.”
    She rose. Her fingers felt numb as she tugged at the zipper of her wet suit. “There was a platter, pewter. It’s caught between two iron spikes like a sculpture. You only had to close your eyes to see it heaped with food and set on a table. Nothing I’ve been studying comes close to doing it, to seeing it.”
    “I figure we hit the galley area,” Matthew put in. “Plenty of wooden utensils, wine jugs, broken dishes.” Grateful, he accepted the cold juice Ray offered him. “I dug a lot of test holes, about a thirty-foot area. The two of you might want to move a few degrees north of that.”
    “Let’s get started.” Buck was already suiting up. Casually, Matthew walked over to pour more juice.
    “Saw a shark cruising,” he said in an undertone. It was well known among the partners that Marla paled and panicked at the thought of sharks. “Wasn’t interested in us, but it wouldn’t hurt to take a couple of bangsticks down.”
    Ray glanced toward his wife, who was reverently documenting the latest treasures on video. “Better safe than sorry,” he agreed. “Tate,” he called out. “Want to reload the camera for me?”
    Twenty minutes later, the compressor was pumping again. Tate worked at the big drop-leaf table in the deckhouse with her mother, cataloguing every item they’d brought up from the wreck.
    “It’s the Santa Marguerite. ” Tate fingered a spoon before setting it in the proper pile. “We found the ordinance mark on one of the cannons. We found our Spanish