Secrets of the Deep (10 page)

Bubbles raced past the round windows as the little sub plunged.

“Look at all the barnacles growing on that rock…” Dani suddenly gasped. “I saw a fish!”

“Imagine that,” Maddox teased her softly.

“You’re going to see a lot more than that today, I warrant,” Jake said.

“How deep can she go?” Maddox asked Archie.

“About a hundred feet. Maybe a bit more, but that’s all I feel comfortable with for now, with all of you here. She can stay safely submerged for a good three hours—five in a pinch—but I’d rather not tax her on her first trip out. We don’t want to end up in Davy Jones’s Locker.”

“What’s that?” Jake asked.

“Oh, I know!” Dani said eagerly, raising her hand. “To go to Davy Jones’s Locker means drowning at sea.” She hurried to explain before anyone could stop her. “Patrick told me every sailor who goes to sea packs all his personal belongings in a long wooden box called a sea locker. If he dies during the voyage, they use his locker for his coffin and bury him at sea.”

“Well, that’s grim,” said Jake.

“Er, you’ve included life rings?” Maddox asked, looking askance at Dani after that grim anecdote—told in such a cheerful tone.

Archie nodded. “The seats of your chairs float—they’re made of cork—and they detach. In case of emergency, just grab one, hold on, and it’ll pop you up to the surface. Also, under your seats, you’ll find I’ve provided each of you with one of those underwater breathing masks I invented a few years ago.”

Jake checked under his seat and found the brass-rimmed, double-glassed breathing apparatus that his cousin had originally devised to help the Thames naiads filter pollution out of the river water that they had to breathe. These clever devices allowed Captain Lydia Brackwater and her maidens to carry out their duties of tending the great river without suffocating.

Archie had later adapted the mask for use by humans, adding an alternative setting that filtered breathable oxygen out of the water. In any case, it was good to know the boy genius had provided them with multiple safety options in case anything went wrong.

While Archie drove and Nixie minded the engine, the rest of them stared out the windows in wonder.

It was warm and stuffy and rather noisy in the cabin from the engine, but the seats were comfortable.

“She can go both forward and reverse at variable speeds,” Archie continued. “Same principle as the diving bell, which has been known about since the days of Alexander the Great. Basically it’s a trapped air bubble in here that keeps air pressure the same on the inside as it is on the outside, near a state of neutral buoyancy…”

His voice trailed off as he realized no one was listening. They were all too enchanted by the views out the portholes, so he just drove, quite in his element, letting his passengers enjoy the ride.

Archie worked the rudder with one hand and various levers with the other, while the chemicals cooked together silently in the furnace, driving heat into the boiler, which in turn forced the steam pressure back to the dual propellers near the tail cone.

These whirred steadily, pushing the
Turtle
forward on to her first adventure.

“So far, so good,” Maddox remarked as they descended slowly.

The water wasn’t very deep yet, maybe twenty feet. The sandy bottom angled downward on a gentle slope.

Thanks to the abundant afternoon sunshine, the cabin was filled with wondrous blue-green light that shimmered over their skin in dancing shadows and waves.

Little thready streams of silver bubbles flew past their windows as they powered on. The weightless sense of floating was like nothing Jake had ever felt before. It was a bit like flying, but not at all like riding through the skies on Red. This felt much gentler and yet less controlled. Hovering, drifting, gliding, tilting side to side as the sea rocked the vehicle, lolling gently up and down on their way as Archie adjusted the pitch. Though their general direction was down, it was not a straight line, but more like a dolphin’s progress: nose up and then nose down, working with the water in a slow, soaring motion.

Maybe the
Turtle
was
the right name after all, Jake thought, staring, wide-eyed, out the porthole.

Leaving the sandy, pebble-strewn shallows well behind, they entered deeper waters and saw colorful coral heads waiting in the turquoise sea ahead and below them.

No one said a word. It was absolutely magical.

Schools of fish rushed by the sub in a rainbow of colors. Long, thin silver ones with blue and yellow stripes down their sides. Bright peach-colored ones. Jake saw a red starfish stuck to the side of a coral mound amid delicate plants waving gently in the current.

The water was so clear.

There were prickly things and blobby things. Flat fish and long, pointy fish. Wispy plants, tufts of tall grasses, strange undersea shrubs with weird berries on them, and they all swayed in the current like they were dancing.

Jake looked up and saw the sea’s silver surface rolling on endlessly above them; he grew mesmerized watching the waves form from the underside, rising to ripple and crest, hurrying ever onward toward the beach.

Even the white sand of the seabed had creased itself neatly into wave form. There, Jake saw what he thought was an ordinary brown rock until it opened big yellow eyes, unwound its legs, and went scuttling away: a small octopus with eight thick, wriggly legs lined with purple suction cups.

The shy creature fled at their approach, tucking itself away into a cranny of the coral reef. Its slithery winding gait reminded him a little of Fionnula Coralbroom, the sea-witch who had once turned herself into a kraken in the middle of a London ballroom and tried to kill him and his Gryphon.

Jake snorted at the memory. Well, she was in jail now at the bottom of the cold North Sea, where she belonged, in the custody of King Oceanus of the merfolk.

Then he pushed her out of his thoughts, for her parting words still tormented him when he let himself think about them too much…

The sea-witch had taunted him with the hint of a possibility that his parents might still be alive. But Jake knew in his heart she had only said it to be cruel. He did not dare believe otherwise.

As a wee boy in the orphanage, he had learned in his few brushes with a possible adoption by a nice family that nothing was more painful than to hope for something so vitally important, only to be disappointed.

No. They were dead, and that was that.

“To the pedals, everyone,” Archie ordered, breaking into Jake’s thoughts. “Let’s put on some speed. Everybody stay in unison, so we keep both sides moving forward evenly. Keep the beat like this. One-two, one-two…”

Dani mumbled it, which made it easier for everyone to stay in sync. The
Turtle
glided ahead more quickly into the blue, and Jake let out a sudden gleeful whoop. “Is this amazing or what? Well done, coz!”

Archie glanced over his shoulder at him and laughed.
“Grazie!”

“Keep your eyes on the road, brother,” Isabelle chided fondly.

As they all continued rhythmically working the foot pedals, Maddox suddenly pointed at his window. “I just saw a stingray! It was buried in the sand. You couldn’t even see it until it popped up and just whooshed away, like a gray kite flying…”

“How’s she doing, skipper?” Nixie called from the back of the cabin.

“Steady as she goes. How’s our fuel?”

“On target.”

“Good. Then what say we go and have a look round inside this temple?” Archie suggested.

Jake was so astounded by the sea itself he had nearly forgotten about the drowned temple until it came into view ahead, cloaked in sapphire shadows.

“Would you look at that,” Maddox said, marveling along with him at the mossy marble columns that lined the ancient temple’s front portico.

As they neared, Jake noted that the wide but shallow front steps of the temple had been half covered by many layers of white sand. Schools of fish wove in and out among the row of front pillars but fled at their noisy approach.

“Astounding,” Archie murmured. “That doorway looks wide enough that the
Turtle
can fit in there…”

Indeed, the ancient Romans had built the marble entrance so big it could probably have accommodated a visit in person from Athena or Jupiter or Ares, or whatever pagan god to whom it had been dedicated.

“Do you think it’s wide enough that we can fit between those pillars?” Maddox murmured.

“It’ll take some tricky maneuvering,” Archie said. “But if my crew stays alert on the pedals as I direct you, I don’t see why not. It’ll be dark in there. Nix, dear, can you be ready please to give us extra light?”

“Child’s play,” she drawled with a smile.

“Atta girl,” he said, sending a quick, smitten glance over his shoulder at his little soul mate.

Maddox shifted uneasily in his chair. “I don’t know. This seems a little dangerous.”

“You think?” Isabelle muttered.

Anger flashed across his face as he glanced over at her. “Pardon, Miss Bradford,” he said with taut politeness, “but you’re not the one tasked with keeping everyone alive.”

“Now, now, no worries,” Archie soothed. “We can do this. I think.”

“Don’t you want to see an ancient temple, Maddox?” Dani asked brightly.

He gave her a look that admitted he was as eager as they all were to go exploring.

“Righty-ho, then,” said Archie, staring ahead with great concentration. “Let’s do this. Be ready to pedal together as I tell you starboard or port—that means right or left. I don’t want to bump into those columns on the way in. They might not be stable after all this time. Plus, it’d be a shame to dent my poor
Turtle
on her first time out. So wait for my command. But first…we need to go just a little bit deeper.”

To get a better view, Jake leaned a little into the aisle, staring breathlessly out the captain’s front viewport.

For the first time in weeks, he didn’t give a single thought to the Dark Druids, well and truly distracted by the adventure.

It was quite a thrill.

Dani glanced at him in bubbling excitement. “We’re probably the first people in a thousand years to go inside this place.”

“Maybe two thousand,” Nixie murmured.

The cabin grew darker as they descended, but thankfully, the candles still glowed.

“Portside! Left pedals—now!”

Jake, with Isabelle sitting in front of him, hastily worked the foot pedals. “One-two, one-two…”

“Enough!” Archie ordered.

They stopped, and the
Turtle
drifted gently toward the center, getting lined up with the building’s ancient doorway.

“Here we go,” Archie said in a low tone.

Jake held his breath.

The submersible powered slowly straight ahead, venturing into the black mouth of the mysterious sunken temple.

Eyebrows knitted with concentration, Archie drove the Sea
Turtle
in between the pillars of the portico and through the wide marble opening of the front door.

“Fallen statue!” Isabelle warned.

“I see it…by Jove. Heh. Get it?” The statue seemed to be one of Jove, so Archie laughed absently as he angled the sub upward. They chugged over the toppled statue of the bearded god unscathed.

“Can you give us more light, Nix?” Maddox asked.

“Aye, we can’t see anything back here,” Jake complained. All the side windows were dark now.

She took out her wand and conjured five ethereal balls of soft, glowing, magical light that passed through the walls of the sub and zoomed out into the water, spreading out and rising, giving them a better view of their surroundings.

“Aha,” said Archie. “Hold on…” He flicked a few levers, adjusted the angle of the flaps, and then cut the steam power to the propellers.

The
Turtle
bumped gently to a halt against some unseen surface. Archie turned to look back at his passengers. “Guess what? There’s an air bubble trapped in here.”

“Really?” Dani murmured in surprise.

He nodded. “We’re at the surface. Anyone fancy a quick look round out there—just for a minute, though—so we don’t run out of air?”

They cheered.

“Let me check first and see if it’s safe,” Maddox said. “Are you sure I can open the hatch now?”

“Go ahead.” Archie pointed out the front window, where Nixie’s illumination balls revealed that, indeed, the front altar of the temple was dry.

They had just traveled through the main section of the building, where the worshippers would have gathered;
that
part lay submerged under several yards of water. But the elevated front section where the pagan priests or priestesses would’ve stood looking out over the congregation was dry all the way up to the temple’s lofty ceiling.

At the base of this ceremonial platform, gentle surf washed against the edge of the marble floor, slowly eroding it to a round, smooth edge.

That was where they had landed.

“Please be careful,” Isabelle said in a taut voice to Maddox as he climbed the few ladder rungs to open up the hatch.

“I’m always careful, Miss Bradford. It’s the curse of my existence,” he muttered, twisting the round handle in the opposite direction from before. Then he lifted the heavy sealed port outward with a creak.

Stepping up another two rungs of the ladder, he poked his head out of the top of the submarine and looked around without a word.

“Well?” Jake demanded impatiently.

Maddox ducked his head back in and flashed a rare smile. “All clear.”

“Let’s go!” Jake jumped out of his chair while Maddox climbed onto the stone surface.

He followed him out, clapping their fearless captain on the shoulder as he passed the cockpit. “Congratulations, Arch. She runs like a dream.”

Archie grinned. “Can’t wait for the next Invention Convention so I can show her off.”

“Me too! But no giants.” With that, Jake swung up the ladder and vaulted out onto the ancient marble floor. He looked around breathlessly at the place. It was full of wonders.