Doctor Who_ Rip Tide - Louise Cooper [9]
On the surface, Charlie had taken out his tobacco tin, made himself a roll-up and was sitting smoking it, gazing back at the beach and thinking his own thoughts. He had just thrown the spray-dampened end overboard when with a small triple splash three heads reappeared.
'It's jammed, all right,' Tim took out his valve and trod water. 'You know what's snarled it? Bloody great lump of metal! Looks like a bit of a ship, though I couldn't tell you which bit:
'Either that,' said Steve, 'or a piece of worn-out equipment that got dumped overboard from a tanker or something, to save them having to pay for disposal.' He looked around him at the swell, rising and falling, and suddenly thought what it must have been like for the drowned man, struggling alone in the sea.
He pushed the thought away, resisting the impulse to shiver. 'We'll have to cut the line,' he told Charlie. 'We'll try and get the pot back for you, but I can't promise.'
'OK,' said Charlie with a sigh. He reached down for his gaff hook. 'Give me a minute to get hold of the buoy, then I suppose you'd better go for it.'
Steve grinned a response and they all dived again. Down once more, following the line's bright trace, and in a short time the source of the trouble was visible on the sea bed. They hadn't investigated it too closely the first time, other than to confirm that the crab pot was jammed there. All Steve had seen through his mask was what looked like a piece of twisted metal, about the size of a small car, half buried in the sand. Now, Tim's knife blade gleamed and the taut line slackened and started to drift away. Steve swam closer to the mysterious object until he was able to make out its structure more clearly.
It was metal of some sort, there could be little doubt of that, and there were no barnacles on it, so it couldn't have been there long. An exploring dogfish, like a miniature shark, flicked out from between two struts and streaked away with a wriggling movement as Steve reached out to touch the wreckage. 'A bit of a ship, Tim had suggested to Charlie. Steve didn't think so. It looked wrong; too small for one thing, and too intricate. Could be junked equipment of some kind, but as to what, he couldn't begin to guess. If it had come from something deepsea, though, the recent currents must have been colossally powerful to have carried it this close to shore.
The crab pot was there, but it was badly damaged. A large hole had been ripped in one side, and any crabs that might have been in there were long gone. But new pots were expensive, and Charlie might be able to repair this one, so, signing to Tim to help, Steve eased and rocked and fiddled with the tangled mess, until at last the pot came free. A cold current washed past as he lifted it clear of the wreckage, and he felt himself being drawn by the moving water, a gentle but insistent tugging that tried to pull him away from the debris on the sea floor. The current stirred up more sand; a shoal of fish swept by – mackerel possibly, though it was difficult to be sure for they were no more than a dim smudge in the gloom – and Steve realised that he was starting to feel the effects of the water's cold. He would have liked to examine the wreckage more closely, but these were far from ideal conditions, and the stirring of the sea bed