The Fifteenth Station

Did's drunkenness was nitrogen narcosis. We called the seizure "I'ivresses des grandes profondeurs." The first stage is a mild anesthesia, after which the diver becomes a god. Cousteau: "The Silent World"

Artie, the young photographer, was the first to realize what had happened. He broke the surface about twenty feet from the boat and, treading water, let his mouthpiece drop to his chest.

"He's coming straight up," he said. "Not decompressing. He didn't make it." The three people on the boat exchanged glances.

"Well, there goes my feature story," Waddell said to Commodore and Mrs. Forsythe. "That's the risk you run in the newspaper business – big build-up, big trip, no payoff."

"Rob's a good boy," Commodore Forsythe said. "If he didn't make it he has a good reason why he didn't make it."

They had left Key West the day before, with Rob at the controls of the Forsythes' forty-eight-foot Cynthia II, and had reached Cay Sal Bank, a hundred miles to the ESE, in time to catch a couple of kingfish for their dinner. Now, the next morning, they were anchored at The Elbow and the boat was riding directly over the underwater ledge where the green water turned to deepest blue and the cliff dropped straight down 600 fathoms, with the weighted line beside it; and Robinson Roy, who had gone down this line ten minutes before to set a new depth record for the free dive, was already back on the surface.

He and his safety man, Herr Schaffner, swam up to the boarding ladder together. The German courteously indicated that Robinson should mount first. Robinson clambered heavily into the boat, sat down, and stripped off his triple-tank assembly. He was frowning. He took his mask from his forehead and threw it, unexpectedly, across the deck.

"Temper, temper," Mrs. Forsythe said, laughing uneasily. A phony blonde hanging onto a bygone youth and beauty, but irreparably stringy in the neck, she was already working on her second gin and tonic, though it was not yet ten A.M.

"I loused it," Rob said, with a savage note in his voice. "All I have to do to set the record is to go on down. So instead I come up."

"Was it my equipment?" the German asked. "Was it something went bad with the breathing?"

"The equipment was fine," Rob stated, standing up. He was a huge young man of twenty-four, clothed in muscle, immensely strong, with a habitual gentleness and diffidence of manner that was submerged under his present agitation. He stared stonily at the floor. "I was down to 275. I've been that far half a dozen times. I don't get it why this time I should pull such a stupid trick."

"Well, I get it," Artie said, still on the ladder. "You are a big muscle-bound ape and you got this idea about setting a record. And you also got this little spark in your bird-brain that tells you to turn around before you drown yourself. So you turn around."

"No, it wasn't that," Rob said. A note of awe came into his voice. "When I came up, damnit, I thought I was going down. I came up maybe fifty feet before I knew what was happening."

"Pressure-happy," Artie said, and climbed in.

"That's right," Robinson said. "I was expecting it, sure. But when it happens to you like that, I tell you, and you're a hundred feet from where you thought you were – well, it makes you think. You don't head back down again. Not me, anyway. Not right away." He had his voice under control again: no one became aware that he was terrified by what had just happened to him.

Waddell, the newspaperman, was a fellow in his middle forties, with a graying crewcut, heavy-framed glasses, and a large jaw padded with fat. Now he was going to show how much he knew. "Our boy didn't chicken out, no sir. He ran into the rapture of the depths. Nitrogen narcosis. It makes the diver feel drunk."

"Well, that's the only way to be," Mrs. Forsythe said, and gave her brassy laugh.

"Maybe not, if you're 200 feet under water," Artie said.

"Anyway," Waddell went on. "it's nothing to fool with. It can kill you. Personally, I don't blame him for giving up the dive, much as I regret losing the story."

"Nobody's giving anything up," Robinson said. He stood there, towering over them all: gentle, mighty, determined, the moving force in the group; and yet like a child among adults. "You think I got you and Artie and Herr Schaffner all the way out here just for the boat ride? I'm going down again."

"That's my boy!" Mr. Forsythe exclaimed. "Rob's not going to give up as easy as all that." He was a florid, puffy man in his early sixties, very natty in his yachting cap, striped jacket and white flannels. He went to Key West every fall and winter and was the only man in town who did not know that his title of "Commodore" was never used without irony. Old Commodore Forsythe, who had once lost a fifty-dollar bet on whether he could get both motors started and turn on the running lights without accidentally turning on something else first. Now it did not occur to him even to wonder whether it was wise for Robinson to dive again: Rob was his boy, the kid he had rescued from the streets, the object of his pride.

"Why," he went on, "when Rob asked me if he could make his dive on this trip, I didn't think twice about it. I've helped him along ever since he was a youngster hanging around his brother's tackle shop. Hell, I gave him the first decent job he ever had, six, seven – how many years ago was it, Rob?"

"Seven years ago, Commodore," Rob said impassively. He was thinking, big deal: skipper on his drunken fishing parties for seven years and no better off than when I started. "Excuse me," he said abruptly. He went down the steps to the galley and sleeping quarters; went into the forward stateroom and locked the door behind him.

"When you gotta go, you gotta go," Mrs. Forsythe said.

Waddell muttered something about taking a look around and climbed up to the flying bridge. He was disturbed by what had happened on the dive and by what he remembered of a conversation he had had the night before with the German, who had come out of the head while he was fixing himself a drink in the galley.

"Hi there, Schaffner," he had said. "Can I make you one?"

"No thank you very much," Schaffner had answered in his accented English. "I do not drink so much, thank you."

Waddell had looked the man over, trying to size him up. He was in his early forties, rather short and very compactly built, and with a manner that was reserved and stiff despite his efforts to adapt himself to American ways. His open face seemed to promise a sort of innocence, until one looked into his eyes, which had no warmth in them but only alert intelligence. Waddell had heard that he had been a commando in Rommel's Afrika Corps, and he said to himself: I'd hate to run into him in the desert on a dark night. Aloud he had said, making conversation:

"Rob tells me he's using your Atlantis equipment on the dive."

"Yes," Herr Schaffner had said.

"He's one hell of a decent boy. I like that kid."

"I agree, yes."

"And if the dive goes OK he has the exclusive import rights to your line for this country, is that right?"

"Well, no," Herr Schaffner said.

Waddell turned to face him. "No?" he asked. "But that's what he told me. Why, that's his main reason for making the dive."

Schaffner looked at him, altogether without guile, and shrugged his shoulders, making a little spreading gesture with his two hands.

"What do you mean?" Waddell asked, frowning.

"Please let me explain," the German said earnestly, his face still devoid of deceit. "I have in Europe a gross business of seven million dollars the year. Now I wish to enter the American market, where the competition is very strong. I must have a powerful representative here, a firm with a national distribution and ten, twenty thousand dollars to advertise my products. With all respect to a fine young man, Mr. Roy is not able to provide these necessaries."

Waddell was not an eminently moral person, but he did not like what he had just heard. "Did you tell him all this?" he asked.

"Perhaps not in so many words," the German said. "But surely you have misunderstood Mr. Roy. Never, never did I offer him the exclusive rights. We spoke of the need for advertising, and I agreed that the deep dive would be most useful for publicity. He was most eager to make the dive; of course, I was willing. (continued on page 38) fifteenth station (continued from page 36) But there was no definite agreement about business arrangements."

"Well, damn," Waddell said. There was the end of his front-page feature story, with byline. He started out the door.

"One moment!" Herr Schaffner said. "You intend to speak with Mr. Roy?"

"What else?" Waddell asked.

"If you will pardon, I think it would be better if not. Mr. Roy is determined to make this dive. Whatever you tell him he will dive. I know this from my talks with him."

"Well, let's let him make up his own mind, OK?" Waddell said. "On the basis of the facts."

"You will make him unhappy and anxious," the German said. "At 200, 300, 400 feet under the water, when he must be paying very much attention, he will be thinking about what you are telling him. It is not good, Mr. Waddell: you will do him great harm."

There was no doubt that Herr Schaffner meant every word of what he said. Waddell came back from the door and sat on a bunk.

"I am an honest man," the German said with fervor. "I will give Mr. Roy his due for this dive. I will make him distributor for all of Florida – a big market. All tourists come to Florida. This will help him to get out of his little tackle shop. Yes! But there is no use causing him to worry at this time."

The German's words worked on the newspaperman like a reprieve from an odious duty. He took a big swig of his drink. It would be a colossal shame to throw away a story like this. "I think maybe you're right, Schaffner," he said. "He has the distributorship for Florida, you say?"

"Yes," the German said. "At least for South Florida."

"By God," Waddell said, "we don't want to upset the boy at this time of all times. I guess you're right." He sloshed his drink around and drained it in a few large gulps. The story was shaping up nicely in his mind: the young pioneer, as of old, altruistically braving the unknown; the rewards prompt and juicy in modern big-business America. "Join me in another?" he had asked.

"Thank you," the German had said courteously. "I do not drink so much."

• • •

Now, in that same cabin, Robinson fell to his knees beside a bunk. Fear and relief mingled in his churning emotions. He pressed his palms together and addressed himself to the patron saint of divers in a hurried and anxious whisper.

"Blessed Saint Nicholas, I thank thee for getting me out of that mess and sending me up instead of down when I was bewildered. And when I make the dive again—" He paused; crossed himself; said a Hail Mary, slowly and with understanding. Folding between his hands the cross that hung from his neck, he took his appeal direct to Headquarters. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, Star of the Sea, stay Thou with me on this next dive. Make it come off all right. Let me set the record this time, and let me get back OK, so the German will give me the exclusive. And make my life different and better from this time on. Amen."

He crossed himself again and rose. He felt a good deal less shaky. As he reached for the door there was a knock on it and when he opened he found Artie, who came in and sat down on a bunk. Artie had picked up a snorkle and was twirling it on his forefinger. He waited awhile before he said, "Roy, you know your decompression table, don't you?"

"You know I know it," Robinson answered warily.

"You came straight up from 275 without a stop," Artie said.

"Well, I was a little bit confused. Anyway, I wasn't down long enough to matter. You don't see me stretched out on the deck, do you?"

"You know what they say about two deep dives in one day," Artie went on, still twirling the snorkle and studying it intently. "I don't think you should go down again."

This statement was a moral act on his part: no one had suggested that he make it and it ran contrary to his interests. He was here to take the pictures that Waddell would write the story around. It would be a large step forward in his career as a free-lance photographer. What he did not like was that Robinson Roy would probably not profit from all this fine publicity. He would be dead.

"Did the German put you up to this?" Robinson asked. "Is that what he's saying?"

"He's not saying a thing," Artie replied.

Robinson visibly relaxed. "Well, I know how to handle myself," he said, too loud. "You want your story, don't you? What're you getting so jumpy about all of a sudden?"

Artie looked up at him with a naked stare that demanded an end to all pretense. Rob's face lost the expression it had assumed when he asked his disingenuous question. "Art," he said, almost in a whisper, "I got to make that dive. I got to get out of this bind they got me in." When Artie continued to stare at him, but said nothing, he went on. "That first decent job the Commodore was talking about, that was when they were tied up in Garrison Bight at Key West and his wife flang a full bottle of whiskey at him and it went over the side. So I went down and found it. Two bucks. Ever since then the same thing. Find this guy's anchor, five bucks. Change that guy's propeller, five bucks. Sell a dollar's worth of fishhooks and sinkers out of that stinking tackle shop. Man, I was made for better stuff than that."

He began to pace up and down the short length of the cabin. "Listen, I don't like what happened on that first dive any more than you do. But when I make this dive with Schaffner's German gear, he gives me the exclusive. That's our agreement. And that's when I get out of this Key West ratrace and into the big time." He made two trips up and down the cabin before he spoke again. "All I know is, I got to make this dive."

Artie went back to the deck, where the others were waiting. "He's going to try again," he reported, and paused. "We could stop him, you know."

"With a sledge hammer, that big ox, you mean," Mrs. Forsythe said with a hoot of laughter.

Artie turned to Herr Schaffner. "You're the key man. All you have to do is tell him the deal is off."

"But why?" Herr Schaffner asked. "I do not understand this alarm. There is not such great danger, I think."

"You heard what he said," Artie said. "He didn't know what he was doing down there."

"Mr. Roy is a strong and courageous young man," the German said. "I am not worried about Mr. Roy."

Artie looked into his eyes and saw in them the refusal to be candid at the expense of this chance to enter the American market with a bang. He looked at Waddell and saw a man who was not going to interfere with Robinson's God-given right to risk his life and thus provide the material for a syndicated feature story.

"It's a terrific story either way, isn't it, Mr. Waddell?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" Waddell said.

"I mean, whether he sets the record or dies trying. In fact, a lot better story if he dies trying." A shocked silence surrounded him. "Well, I don't want the story that bad."

He walked over to the chair where Rob had left his diving knife and took it from its sheath. It was obvious that he intended to cut the weighted line. Waddell stepped quickly in front of the line, blocking him.

"Now wait a minute!" he commanded, coloring with anger. "You have no right to do that. Where do you get off with that stuff, making Roy's decisions for him? Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?" He stood there scowling, his (continued on page 104) fifteenth station (continued from page 38) jaw thrust out. Artie looked at him for a moment and then put the knife back in its sheath.

"OK," he said, facing away from them. "It's all right with me. Just let's not kid ourselves, that's all."

The German's face remained expressionless, but Waddell looked with outrage at Artie and then at the Commodore; and it was the Commodore who spoke. "Oh, come off it, Artie," he said. "Rob's too smart a boy to go and hurt himself. You're getting a little hysterical, it seems to me."

"Maybe so," Artie said. "We'll know in a few minutes."

That Waddell is a real unscrupulous bastard, he thought. Maybe the German isn't so bad. Artie found his thoughts going back to the scene at breakfast that morning. Robinson had been outlining the plan to put the German at the 200-foot marker and was just helping himself to the eggs and bacon when the German said:

"Pardon, Mr. Roy, that is unwise."

Robinson had looked up. "What's unwise?" he asked. "The 200 feet? You want to post yourself at 150?"

"To eat at this time," Herr Schaffner said. "Please pardon, but I am knowing something of the human physiology. When you eat, much blood is going to the guts, for the digestion. But you are needing all your blood for the head at this time." And he tapped his head solemnly with all four fingers of his left hand.

"Damnit, man," Robinson said. "I've been up since dawn. I'm hungry. It won't hurt me to have one measly egg." He picked up his fork.

Herr Schaffner laid his down, and he blushed. "I am very sorry, Mr. Roy," he said firmly and obviously with great reluctance. "If you eat, I must say that all our agreement is called off."

There was a moment of amazed and then embarrassed silence. It was Waddell who spoke next. "Precisely what is that agreement, Herr Schaffner?" he could not forbear asking.

"Why the hell are you eating?" Robinson burst out, very red in the face. "If it's so damned dangerous. What is this, anyway?"

"I am extremely sorry," the German said, squirming in his distress but still firm. "You are right – I should not eat too." And he pushed his plate aside. "But I am safe, I think, at 200 feet, and you are in much danger. I am only thinking of you, Mr. Roy." He paused. "And of myself," he added. "I must admit it. It will not help me if you die with my Atlantis equipment on your back."

Artie had tried to ease the tension. "Tell me, Herr Professor, is it OK if I eat this last bite of bacon? The egg in me is calling 'Bacon! Bacon!' All my blood is hollering for bacon."

"Oh yes," the German said, smiling tentatively.

Robinson had the good sense to laugh. He put his fork on the table. "All right," he said. "At least I can have some coffee."

"Coffee is good," Herr Schaffner said. "A stimulant."

"I guess we're all a bit nervous," Waddell said.

The little crisis was over.

Below, Robinson was still pacing in the cabin. He was trying to make absolutely certain that he had chosen correctly. His thoughts were moving back and forth over his life, past and future; and one fact occupied his mind more than any other: all his life, it seemed to him, forces that were too big for him to cope with had been dropping deadwood in his path, shunting him off in directions he didn't want to go, or simply picking him up and telling him to do things he didn't want to do.

The draft and Korea, for instance – well, that was obvious. But typical. Three years knocked out of his life with nothing to show for it. Another example: he had never wanted to be in the tackle-shop business. That was his brother's. He had been all set to get his training as a civil engineer under the GI Bill; then, two weeks before he got back, his brother died. It was one of those times when he got pushed in the wrong direction: somebody had to run the store. There was no way out of it. The tackle shop was where the grocery money came from.

It was the bind he had to get out of. And Key West, that end-of-the-road dump where all the bums collected when they had reached the end of the road – that was something else he had to get out of. Maybe his family were the bigshots on the island at one time; well, they weren't any more. That was another way he was getting pushed around: his old mother, sitting on her second-floor veranda year after year behind the bougainvillaea vine, always taunting him with his failure to measure up to his father's flamboyant ways. But just let him try to show a little gumption – like when he went down thirty feet and put that sign on the ocean bottom, no fishing except for patrons of roy's tackle shop, and got all that free publicity – she screeched her head off about the danger. Be a man but be my little baby, too: that was her idea of how things should be.

And Grace, his girl: the girl he couldn't marry because there wasn't enough money for a home of their own and no girl could be asked to live in the same house with that mother of his Grace, who had to work as a waitress, getting her fanny pinched while she waited for him to get out of the corner he was backed into. That was the worst part of it all.

He turned his thoughts to the future, which was bright. This deal with Schaffner was the best thing that ever happened to him. He saw himself in his new Miami office; it was shiny and neat. Two secretaries were busy at their machines; two men were packing a crate in the back of the store, where the shelves were piled high with inventory. He was on the phone, taking an order from a dealer in Tampa; Grace was at their home in Coral Gables, fixing supper or something. It never occurred to him to ask where he would get the money to buy such a home, or lay in such an inventory, or rent such a store, or hire such a staff. This was the Future, this was the New Life: it was his for the taking, once he had unlocked the magic door.

And all that lay between was the dive: that brief, blue, horrid chasm between his past and his future. Abruptly he was down again beside the cliff, in that deadly purple world, floating downward past 225, 250, 275; in his memory he lived again the giddy indifference that had sent him up instead of down, giggling to himself and actually turning a somersault in the water. Despite his prayer, the prospect of another dive frightened him terribly. Yet there was no way out of it. It was as if he was about to undergo a perhaps fatal operation, to save his life from some even more fatal disease. He would be afraid of it, but he would do it. With God's help it would go off without a hitch: straight down this time, with no fooling around; mark the slab at 400; get on back up; decompress at the various stages with the tanks Artie and Schaffner brought down to him on the agreed schedule; back into the boat with a world's record in his pocket and no limit to what the future had to offer if he played it right. He took a deep breath and rejoined the group on the deck. They were not talking to each other.

"Well, what's the word, hero?" Artie asked.

"I guess this is as good a time as any," Rob said. He picked up a new triple tank from where it lay near the stern and prepared to check the pressure with the gauge from his kit. "Let's do it the same as last time. Artie at about 50 feet, Herr Schaffner at the safety station. I'll give three tugs on the line at every marker, so he knows where I am."

"Pardon, Mr. Roy," the German said, "but you did not do this on the first attempt."

"I know," Rob said. "I forgot. This time I'll stick to the plan."

"Please, a question," Herr Schaffner continued. "If I do not receive these signals from you, I should, go down for you?"

"Well, now, one thing," Rob said self-consciously. "Like I said before, nobody goes any lower than 250. Now I want that to be perfectly clear. If you see me in trouble this side of 250, use your judgment. If I'm lower I'll cut the line, as a distress signal, and drop my weights. That'll make me rise."

"I see," the German said. "But I am not happy about this system of signals. With that great weight on the line I do not think it will function. Would you not permit another line around your middle, for signals and to pull you up if necessary?"

"This will be a record free dive," Robinson said, almost harshly. "Free of any contact with the surface, and nobody to say it wasn't done right."

"In other words, no rescue line," Waddell amended, looking up from the notes he was taking.

"That's right. That's why we have that three-hundred-pound engine block holding the line down, so I can't get down there out of sight and pull the markers up to me instead of going down after them. Mr. Waddell, I hope you make sure to mention that, along with how I used Herr Schaffner's equipment."

"Don't worry, Rob," Waddell said. "I'll mention it, all right." Then, moved by the look of stern determination on Rob's face, he burst out, "My God! The zeal of youth! What do the young have to do nowadays to prove themselves? Move faster than sound. Rise higher than air. Dive deeper than death."

The Commodore, impressed by this rhetoric, broke into speech. As usual, he was unnecessarily loud. "Listen, Rob, damnit – now listen, boy. This is just a sort of stunt, isn't it? I mean, there's no real danger involved, is there? We want to finish off this weekend with some good fishing. You're not doing anything foolish now, are you, son?"

"Nothing foolish, believe me. Commodore, sir," Robinson said. "This is the least foolishest thing I ever did in my life."

The Commodore's face, which had been pulled out of shape by anxiety, fell back into its usual disorder.

"Well, let's get the show on the road," Rob said. Silently he and Herr Schaffner got their gear into shape – tightened their regulators to the tanks, opened the valves and took test inhalations, spat in their masks and sloshed them in the sea, to retard fogging, bound on their weight belts – while Artie, crouching here and climbing there, snapped pictures.

"Let me have one of Rob alone," he said, "all ready to go. That first one, I remember, he didn't have his mask and llippers on. Stand by the gunwale there."

There was silence while he posed. Waddell was jotting in his notebook.

"All right," Artie said. "Now for the underwater stuff." While the others waited he got into his gear; and that made three of them standing on the deck in their diving rigs: already creatures of the sea, ungainly in the air. It was a pregnant moment; even the Forsythes kept quiet.

"Well, let's go," Robinson said, sitting on the gunwale with his back to the water.

Herr Schaffner stepped up to Robinson and extended his hand. "I wish you the greatest luck," he said formally. "As we say in German, Hals und Beinbruch. Break neck and leg. Is a wish of good luck for mountain climbers."

"Thanks," Robinson said. "I guess this is a sort of reverse mountain climbing, when you think about it."

And so, with a knuckle of fear in his belly, and all his great strength concentrated on the success of the magic act that would change everything in his life from black to white, Robinson Roy tumbled backward into the sea. The anchor line stretched off at a lazy angle, terminating on the ledge 75 feet below; the other line went straight down and vanished in the blue, with the white markers hanging from it at intervals of 25 feet. Artie splashed in, with his camera case in his hand, and right behind him the German. Robinson swam down slowly, to let the German catch up; they met at the brink of the cliff, by the first marker. The visibility was startling, 50 yards or more. In the weightless underwater world it was easy for Robinson to imagine that vertical was horizontal, and that what was just below him was not the floor of the sea, rolling off and dropping three-fourths of a mile, but the crest of a hill that flattened out to a plain, over which he was looking toward the horizon invisible in a deep blue fog.

Robinson gave the OK signal to Schaffner, who returned it. Side by side they went down the line feet first, taking their time. The descending wall of rock was not ten feet from them. Its face was deeply pocked and uneven, and for the first few feet the living coral kept them company; then it died out. At 175 feet Schaffner stopped. Rob nodded. Schaffner made a fist with his thumb tucked in. Rob went on down alone.

He could feel the narcosis sneaking up on him at around 190: the heightened sense of well-being, the bitter metallic taste of nitrogen in his mouth. Watch out, boy, he told himself; don't let go of yourself like you did the last time. At 200 he gave three vigorous jerks on the line and looked up. Schaffner, silhouetted against the light, waved his hand. The narcosis was not bad, not fright-ening – in fact pleasant, like being tight but not drunk. He went down to 225 and jerked three times again; again Schaffner waved. The rhythm of his jerks on the line reminded him of "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," and he goose-stepped extravagantly down to 250, humming into his mouthpiece. At 250 Schaffner did not wave to the signal, and Robinson knew that he had insulted him. Just what you'd expect of a damned humorless Kraut.

The fact was that Schaffner had not seen the goose-step and had not felt the signal. As he had feared, the system was not working. He was getting a continuous series of jerks from above, and any signals from below were lost. He peered down: Robinson was barely visible in the blue twilight. Even as he watched, the vague form vanished. All contact between them was broken.

At 275 Robinson paused, fondling the marker, assaying his condition. He was giddy now; dead drunk, in fact. Never-theless, he was keenly alert – not like the last time. This time he had things under control. Nothing escaped him. He saw a little fish dodge into a crevice in the cliff and then poke its nose out warily. Something told him that he could catch that fish in his bare hands, if he chose to: something else, a powerful voice, told him that this was an illusion and to watch out.

He hit upon a brilliant way to test the clarity of his mind: each marker would be one of Christ's Stations of the Cross and he would count them "all, right down to where he was. He began to follow this trail that he had known since childhood. Jesus is condemned at 75, He bears the Cross at 100, He calls for the first time at 125, He meets His Mother at 150, He is helped by Simon at 175. Or is it Herr Schaffner who helps Him, hanging there at the safety station, taking no chances, while the ones who count go forward – up the hill or down the cliff, it was all the same. Yes, it was Herr Schaffner who gave Him a hand, shouting "Hals und Beinbruch." Good old Schaffner.

Robinson forgot to jerk on the line and let himself sink slowly toward 300. The air was coming to him now as a thick fluid, like a sort of soup; with each breath his regulator emitted a mournful scream. Everything about him was thick and oversize. His love for every living thing was sausage-shaped; the keen edge of his mind was rounded, like the keel of a submarine, just the way it should be. Keenness was cruelty. There was good old Veronica, wiping off the Savior's face.

And suddenly, in a great burst of inner light, he was cleansed of error. The insight was granted him that his rehearsing of the Via Dolorosa was not merely a device: with utter clarity he recognized the identity of his progress downward with Christ's Passion. How obvious it was! Each of them beset by hardships, each of them moving toward his ultimate fulfillment! This marker now, 300, that must be about his seventh marker, that was Christ's seventh Station. Jesus had just fallen for the second time.

Robinson tugged gently on the line; gently: for with each pull he was helping his Savior to His feet.

"Come," he said in his mind. "We have not far to go."

Robinson's body took a horizontal posture, his feet toward the cliff, his hands gripping the line above his head. The cliff was now a plain, as he had imagined: he was walking in the blue fog, with Christ by his side; walking a yard or two above the rough ground, which was only proper in the company of Him who could work miracles.

They walked together while He spoke to the women; and these women, naturally enough, were Rob's mother and his girl, Grace-of-God, who were urging Him not to go through with this stupid crucifixion; to 325, where he lifted Him to His feet for the third time; to 350, where Christ was brutally stripped of his garments, while Robinson could only crouch and watch, powerless against the North Korean soldiers.

"I am trying to save someone, too," he said, to smooth things over. "My wife who works in the inn and draws her water from the well. I must save her from that."

He swam down quickly then, breathing syrup, his eyes closed: unwilling to witness the hideous fact of Christ's crucifixion, agony and death. Yet he witnessed it, behind closed eyes, in images that zoomed into his mind off the altars of churches and the illustrated pages of books. No pain, no shock, no intimate detail of anguish – nothing was spared him. And he knew why: he realized that the Cross was being laid on him and that this journey was indeed what he had hoped it would be, the beginning of a new and better life.

At the thirteenth Station it was not Christ's body that was taken from the Cross: it was his own. He was dead and yet alive; and the reason why he was alive was perfectly clear: there was need for his nimble power in the world. Slowly he sank, or flew, to the last Station, the fourteenth; humbly he allowed himself to be borne to an opening in the cliff, or plain, and placed within, knowing that this was the last formality of his former life, his sepulture, and that it did not matter.

Opening his eyes, he saw that the turning point was marked with the magic number 400. Near him was a rusty engine block. He understood at once that, even as Christ had ridden to Jerusalem on a donkey, he was to ride to the Second Coming in humility. He straddled the engine block and took his knife from his belt. On the mystical 400 he scratched not his initials but the Sign.

And now to the fifteenth Station, the hardest of them all: the return to the world; where two thousand years had made no difference, where decent people still didn't have a fair chance, and where there were going to be some basic changes made.

"Yippee!" he shouted, spitting out his mouthpiece to do so. "Armageddon, here I come!" Holding tight to his mount, he cut the line.

Two hundred and twenty-five feet above him Schaffner felt the line go slack: the distress signal. He pulled it up a foot: it was not heavy. He waited ten seconds and lifted again: it was cut, all right. He put his head straight down and swam as fast as he could, peering into the blue twilight below and simply ignoring the narcosis – not pausing – when it hit him. He was groggy but he knew when he had reached 250 feet.

Perhaps, if he went down a bit farther, he could see something? He swam down past the marker at 250 to the one at 275 and pulled up coil after coil of the line until he could see the end of it. For about a minute he searched the water. No body rose to meet his gaze.

Holding the 375-foot marker in his hand he swam toward the surface, hardly breathing as the air in his lungs, expanding with the reduced pressure, bubbled out of him in a steady stream. At 100 feet he met Artie, swimming down. Artie's eyes were wide with unspeakable questions; he made pointing gestures downward. Schaffner, shrugging and gesturing also, rose to twenty feet and stopped for decompression. He handed the 375-foot marker to Artie, who took it to the boat and climbed in.

Ten minutes later Schaffner broke the surface and hauled himself aboard. He ached in the knees and shoulders and had a severe headache, and this worried him, but no one was concerned with his condition. Half a dozen questions flew at him before his feet touched the deck. The Commodore was pasty white; Mrs. Forsythe was shrieking hysterically; Waddell was dangerously red in the face. Only Artie, standing at the other gunwale with the line in his hands and his back to the uproar, was not shouting.

"He has disappeared," Schaffner said. "The line is cut – a sign of trouble. I went down but I saw nothing. There was nothing I could do."

"Go down and get him!" That's what you could do!" Mrs. Forsythe screamed at him.

"Madam," the German said, coloring, "do you want two people dead on this trip? I was not supposed to go down more than 250."

Waddell was in a rage with himself for his part in this disaster. Naturally, his impulse was to transfer the responsibility elsewhere. He said to Schaffner, his lips drawn back and his teeth together, "So you let that boy drown, safety man. We'll put it on the wire, Schaffner, every sordid detail of it. Your firm is going to get a lot of publicity – a lot of publicity."

"At least the trip wasn't wasted," Artie said in a strange voice, turning around. "We wanted a record dive and that's what we got." He held the 375-foot marker out to Schaffner. "You were down that far, weren't you?"

Schaffner had not been anywhere near 375, but he was not such a fool as to pass up an opportunity like this. He nodded.

"Well, there's your world's record," Artie said. He looked at Waddell. "What a story! Safety man, in valiant effort to rescue comrade, sets record himself. You ought to get the Pulitzer for this one." Immediately, Waddell began to see the situation, and Herr Schaffner, in a new light.

The Commodore, still ashen, was looking around at the vast expanse of sea. The Elbow, eight hundred yards away, offered little consolation with its few pinnacles of barren rock. To the east a mass of clouds seemed to be gathering and bearing down on them, threatening storm. There was no one left who knew the first thing about handling a boat.

"Goddamn it," he said, his voice shaking, "Rob never told me anything like this could happen. This boat cost me forty thousand dollars. How in hell do we get it back to port?"