They all let Genaro alone.

From then on Ben became a servant to this strange affair, helping a man descend daily into the deep. As he watched him sink down, a chill ran up Ben's spine. There was something ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as though he had become a part of some conspiracy-something quite not right. It was no wonder that the crew had been terrified. Ben felt the same feeling creeping up on him by slow, certain degree.

The Japanese and Ben were watching Genaro's lines one rainy day. He had been down a long time, too long. The yacht was as motionless as a city for the dead. The rain formed little pools on the deck. Time did not move at all.

There came a yank on the air hose, then another. Then all at once the lines grew taut. The air hose quivered. Suddenly it parted and shot to the surface, its end squirming about like a snake. Ben had the life line in his fists, but a moment later it eased off, loose in his hands. The end came up, shredded and broken.

Genaro had seven minutes to live. The air in his diving dress would last that long. Ben had no lines on him now. There was no way he could get up.

Ben fought into his diving suit and the old engineer put on the helmet. He went over so fast that his faceplate barely clicked shut before he sank under. Ben dropped swiftly and prayed that he wouldn't get the bends. He held his breath at first, then slowly inhaled. The air smelled stale like that valved from the inside of a football.

The young boy hit bottom and looked around.

He peered through the face-plate of his helmet into a blue-green void. Everything was very quiet except for the soft tunk of the air compressor pumping air into the helmet. Sound is a dead thing at the bottom of the sea.

one

A small fish drifted by, stared through the plate of Ben's helmet into his eyes, then turned and swam away.

Tall grasses waved leisurely in the slight current. A silver cloud of minnows drifted by overhead. Before Ben stretched a landscape of rugged, black rocks amidst a jungle of towering kelp. Through the green daylight under the sea, he made out a huge, dark thing looming out of the near distance-a galleon.

Ben walked forward, pushing against the weight of the water. He turned on the lamp clipped to his shoulder, and it shed daylight all around him. He found himself walking on a white, sandy floor.

Reaching the slimy wreck through the dim light, Ben made out a black hole up on the galleon's side. He shivered and felt hot all at once; Genaro must be down in there. As quickly as he could, he clambered up along the hull, working his way to opening and peered down. Inside the hull was night, arctic night.

He crawled into the hole and felt his way down. His light gave visibility of about thirty feet and showed him to be in some kind of passageway leading towards the middle of the ship. The galleon was half lying on its side, tipped to an angle.

As Ben went on down he thought of the things that could have happened to Genaro, for it is within the wreck that a diver faces his greatest perils. Against rotten wooden rails, tons of debris may be piled. Suddenly it may break through, and he may be crushed by an avalanche. And down through the holes and recesses of a huge wreck move strange and freakish currents. Waterfalls under the sea plunge down in gaping chasms. If a diver is swept in, he cannot escape, for a sudden descent as little as twenty feet, and he is crushed by the pressure.

Ben hurried along, his torch blazing a trail before him. The passageway led him down into the bowels of

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