Passionate Choice

Chapter 6.6

   "What do you think of the wreck we've just looked at?" Keith asked in his casual way as if he hadn't touched her or said anything about eloping.

   Selena unlatched her weight belt and let it drop to the ground, the. Removed her buoyancy compensator, letting the air out of it.

   "It's very interesting," she said. "But it isn't the Santiago. It's too small to have been a galleon."

   "That's my opinion too. I think it's the Pelican but I have no proof. I wish we could find some artefacts that are unmistakably English in origin and made in the right period, say late seventeenth or early eighteenth century."

   "I found some coins today," she said, holding up her waterproof bag. "Want to see them?"

   "Sure. But let's get out of the sub and into some shade. We'll both get sunstroke if we stay out here."

   He led the way to a group of sea-grape trees and they sat down on the clean sand under the shade cast by the pale twisted trunks and thick, oval, green leaves. Two small lizards disturbed by their approach ran away, soon becoming a part of the patterns of the shadows.

   "I think the coins are silver," Selena said, taking her find out of the bag. "I also picked this." She held up the broken piece of clay jar. And this." She held up the grenade. "There was a box of them that had been found recently. And Gary and I found several of them in the crevasse, looking as if they had fallen there but I am quite sure they weren't in the crevasse yesterday or the day before that."

   He took the grenade from her, turning it in his hand. "The Pelican wouldn't have varied boxes if grenades," he murmured. "These are Spanish."

   "The bid could have been part of the loot taken from the Santiago. In the records of the cargo and weapons carried by the galleon, there is a reference to so many boxes of granadas." She picked up one of the coins and began to rub it with the ball of her thumb. "About the chest you pointed out. Did you notice it is padlocked?"

   "I noticed that yesterday and I looked at the padlock. It was made in the USA. You know what I'm thinking, don't you?"

   "You're thinking that the loot from the Santiago is in it," she said slowly. "You're thinking that Louis Langdon found the treasure and hid it in that box."

   "That's right. And every time Heather is in need of money, she goes to the box, takes something of value from it and sells it. At least she gets someone to dive for it. And the way things are set up in these islands regarding the wrecks of ships that are within the offshore limit, there had to be a good reason for anyone diving and exploring a wreck. If there is any possibility of treasure being found on a wreck, the government must know about it and take its share. So the story was cooked up about the Santiago wreck without treasure being found in the crevasse under the freighter so that an accredited diving company and an archeologist with an international reputation could put on a small expedition."

   "Then you don't believe that the Santiago wreck is in the crevasse?" said Selena, turning to him quickly.

   "Do you believe those old timbers you've been scraping At belonged to a Spanish galleon?" He countered, his lips curling derisively.

   She looked away from him at the shining sea, her shoulders slumping as she realized that what he had just told her only fitted in with her own puzzled thoughts about the remains under the wreck of the freighter after spending two and a half days there searching and finding nothing.

   "No, I don't," she admitted with a sigh. "And I don't understand why Ben persists in searching there..." She broke off as a sudden alarming thought flashed through her mind. Turning to him again urgently, she said in a whisper, "You don't suppose that Ben went down yesterday afternoon while we were absent to get something out of the box for Heather and at the same time removed some grenades into the area where we've been diving to provide something for Gary and me to find, do you?"

   "You're catching on, honey," he drawled, the Southern lilt very noticeable. "He moved some grenades there...to provide something that could only have come off a Spanish galleon." He paused then added reflectively, "Heather was a bit too obvious in suggesting that you go with me into the village yesterday afternoon, I thought."

   "But Ben wasn't. He wanted me to stay with him," she argued.

   "So why didn't you?" He challenged, giving her a direct but mocking glance.

   "You know why. I've told you why. I...I wanted to be with you without anyone watching," she whispered.

   Under the shade of green leaves and slender grey twisted trunks, the hot atmosphere suddenly twanged with all kinds of sensual messages. Having stated her position and revealed her feelings to him, Selena waited for his response, aware in every tingling nerve of his nearness and longing, as she had longed the previous afternoon, to touch him—yet afraid to, afraid that she might sink lower in his opinion than she had already.