Читать книгу Deeper into the Darkness онлайн

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My dive buddy and I dropped down slowly beside the shotline, peering below as we slowly descended. Finally, when we were some 35 metres down, the uniform deep blue beneath us started to acquire a form – blurred, indistinct, ragged lines began to materialise out of the darkness below. Something manmade lay beneath us.

We pressed on down, feeling the squeeze of the water pressure on our ears, on our body – our drysuits compressing and nipping at our skin until we bled some air into them to relieve the squeeze.

We eventually passed through a visibility horizon – one minute we were seeing blurry lines beneath us – the next, an upturned World War I dreadnought battleship lay beneath us. It looked magnificent: a massive manmade island set on an underwater desert of clean white sand and shale.

Our shotline had landed just off the wreck amidships – the wreck was so big I couldn’t tell initially which way was forward and which way astern. So, picking one direction at random we gunned the motors of our underwater scooters and headed off. Soon, up ahead I could see the wreck beginning to lose its shape, and it became clear that we were heading towards the bow. I checked my depth gauge; it read 63 metres. In old money, that meant there was more than 200 feet of water above us – it was a long, long way back up to the surface.