Mike Dixon

„We went over something big back
there …‟
David listened as Tim told him
about the powerful signal he had received
and felt stupid. There was a
monitor on the sled and he‟d failed
to keep an eye on it. He wondered
what else he had missed.
„You‟d better go back … check it
out.‟
He squeezed air from his buoyancy vest and sank below
the waves. What followed was depressing. He retraced his
steps and soon discovered what Tim was talking about. The
monitor flashed as he left the chasm and the cause wasn‟t
hard to find. A forty-foot steel container of the sort carried
on the decks of modern cargo vessels lay half-buried in
sand. He examined the markings. It came from Taiwan. Not
more than twenty years old, the container was already covered
in coral. What would it be like in another twenty? What
would it be like in a hundred? That was how long Tong
Yee‟s gold had been there. David had visions of pots filled
with gold dust, encrusted with coral and buried far beneath
the sand.
Why hadn‟t Charlie gone after the gold? Humphrey had
asked that question and he‟d replied that half a million
bucks was chicken feed to Charlie. Now David realized that
was only half the answer. The gold might be far harder to
find than he‟d imagined.
His enthusiasm had been based on the ease with which
Captain Cook‟s cannons had been retrieved. But the Cap-
tain‟s log gave precise coordinates for the cannons while
Tong Yee‟s journal gave a vague location for the gold.
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