5

There were many things to do before the chests could be reached. Usually it took me half a day to bring up a pouch of coins from the sunken ship.

The place where I dove, which was surrounded by jagged rocks and driftwood, was too narrow for my father. He had tried to squeeze through when we first discovered the galleon, but partway down he got stuck and I had to pull him back. It was my task, therefore, to go into the cavelike hole. My father stood beside it and helped me to go down and to come up.

I buckled a strong belt around my waist and to it tied a riata that was ten varas long and stout enough to hold a stallion. I fastened my knife to my wrist—a two-edged blade made especially for me by our blacksmith—to protect myself against spiny rays and the big eels that could sting you to death. In the many dives I had made, I never had seen a shark.

Taking three deep breaths, I prepared to let myself down into the hole. In one hand I held a sink-stone, heavy enough to weigh me down. I let out all the air in my chest, took a deep breath, and held it. Then I began the descent.

The sink-stone would have taken me down fast, but the edges of the rocky hole were sharp. I let myself down carefully, one handhold at a time. It took me about a minute to reach the rotted deck where the chests lay. I now had two minutes to pry the coins loose and carry them to the surface. We had tried putting the coins in a leather sack and hoisting them to the surface. But we had trouble with this because of the currents that swept around the wreck.

The coins lay in a mass, stuck together, lapping over each other and solid as rock. They looked, when I first saw them, like something left on the stove too long. I always expected to find them gone, but now as I walked toward the chests, with the stone holding me down, I saw that they were still there. No one had come upon them during the seven months since our last visit.

The first time I had dived and brought up a handful of coins, I said to my father that we should empty both the chests and take the coins home.

"Then everyone would talk," Don Saturnino said. "As soon as they saw the gold coins the news would spread the length of California."

"We don't need to tell anyone. I can hide them in my chest at home."

"The news would fly out before the sun set. At the ranch there are many eyes."

I still thought it was a better idea to empty the chests before someone else did, but I could see that my father enjoyed these days, when the two of us went to the Blue Beach, so I said no more.

The sun was overhead and its rays slanted down through the narrow crevice. There were many pieces of debris on the deck and I had to step carefully. With my knife I pried loose a handful of coins. They were of a dark green color and speckled here and there with small barnacles. I set the coins aside.

My lungs were beginning to hurt, but I had not felt the tug of the riata yet, the signal from my father that I had been down three minutes. I pried loose a second handful and put my knife away. Before the tug came I dropped my sink-stone and took up the coins. Gold is very heavy, much heavier than stones of the same size.

Fish were swimming around me as I went up through the hole of rocks and tree trunks, but I saw no sting rays or eels. I did see a shark lying back on a ledge, but he was small and gray, a sandshark, which is not dangerous.

On my third trip down, I hauled up about the same number of coins as the other times. The pouch we had brought was now full. I asked my father if we had enough.

"Are you tired?" he said.

"Yes, a little."

"Can you go down again?"

"Yes."

"Then go."

I dived twice more. It was on the last dive that I had the trouble. The tug on the riata had not come, but I was tired, so I started away from the chest with one handful of coins. Close to the chests, between them and the hole, I had noticed what seemed to be two pieces of timber covered with barnacles. They looked as if they might be part of a third and larger-chest.

I still held my knife and I thrust it at a place where the two gray timbers seemed to join. It was possible that I had found another chest filled with coins.

As the knife touched them, the two timbers moved a little. Instantly, I felt pressure upon my wrist. I drew back the hand that held the knife. Rather, I tried to draw it back, but it would not move. The tide had shifted the timbers somehow and I was caught. So I thought.

I felt a tug upon the riata fastened to my waist. It was the signal from my father to come to the surface. I answered him with two quick tugs of the leather rope.

Now I felt a hot pain run up my arm. I tried to open my fingers, to drop the knife, but my hand was numb. Then as I stared down into the murky water I saw a slight movement where my hand was caught. At the same moment I saw a flash of pink, a long fleshy tongue sliding along my wrist.

I had never seen a burro clam, but I had heard the tales about them, for there were many on our coast. Attached to rocks or timbers, they grew to half the height of a man, these gray, silent monsters. Many unwary fishermen had lost their lives in the burros' jaws.

The pain in my arm was not so great now as the hot pains in my chest. I gave a long, hard tug on the riata to let my father know that I was in trouble. Again I saw a flash of pink as the burro opened its lips a little, and the fat tongue slid back and forth.

I dropped the coins I held in my other hand. The burro had closed once more on my wrist. But shortly it began to open again, and I felt a sucking pressure, as if the jaws were trying to draw me inside the giant maw.

Putting my knees against the rough bulge of the shell, as the jaws opened and then began to close, I jerked with all my strength. I fell slowly backward upon the ship's deck. My hand was free. With what breath I had I moved toward the hole. I saw the sun shining above and climbed toward it. The next thing I saw was my father's face and I was lying on the river's sandy bank. He took my knife in his hand.

After I told him what had happened, my father said, "The knife saved your life. The burro clamped down upon it. See the mark here. The steel blade kept its jaws open. Enough to let you wrench yourself free."

He pulled me to my feet and I put on my leather pants and coat.

"Here," he said, passing the reins of his bay gelding to me, "ride Santana. He goes gentler than Tiburón."

"I'll ride my own horse," I said.

"Good, if you wish it."

"I wish it," I said, knowing that he didn't want me to say that my hand was numb.

"Does the hand hurt?"

"No."

Some?

"No."

"You were very brave," he said.

My father wanted me to be braver than I was. I wanted to say I was scared, both when the burro had hold of me and now, at this moment, but I didn't because he expected me to be as brave as Carlos. It was at times like this that I was angry at my father and at my dead brother, too.

"It was good fortune," I said.

"Fortune and bravery often go together," Don Saturnino said. "If you do not hurt, let us go."

I got on the stallion and settled myself in the saddle. "Yes, let us go," I said, though I could not grip the reins well with but one hand.

On the way home we talked about the pouchful of coins and my father decided to sell them in San Diego. The first coins he had sold in Los Angeles to a gringo trader.

"The gringo was curious about where I got them," he said. "Too curious to suit my fancy."

"What did you say to him?" I asked.

"I said that the coins had been in the family for many years. He looked at them for a long time. He turned them over and over. He was curious about the green spots on the coins. He said the coins must have been in the sea at some time. I told him that it was likely, since my grandfather was a captain of the sea."

"I didn't know that my great-grandfather was a captain of the sea."

"He was not," Don Saturnino said, and laughed. "We will try San Diego this time. Doña Dolores has invited the countryside, so we will need to make a good bargain. We will need to buy two barrels of aguardiente because all the Peraltas possess legs that are hollow. Some of the Bandinis and one or two of the Borregos, especially Don Alfonso Borrego, are hollow likewise."

My father also liked to drink the fiery aguardiente.

"And we'll have music?" I said.

"Much music. And not from Dos Hermanos. We will search and find the best from everywhere. We will make the Peraltas envious. And all the rest. We will dance for two days and not pause except to fortify ourselves."

We came to the brow of the hill that lies between Dos Hermanos and the sea. Below us, in front of the big gate of our half-house, half-fort, fires were burning in pits the Indians had dug. The fires would burn for three days, until the night before the wedding. Then a thick layer of ashes would be sprinkled over the coals, and slabs of beef, half a cow, each wrapped in heavy wet cloth would be laid on the beds and covered with earth. The slabs would cook and steam all night and most of the next day. Already I was hungry, thinking about the tender meat.

My father said, "Are you pleased that it is Yris who marries the Peralta?"

"Yes, very pleased," I said.

"You have no regrets?"

"None."

"Someday I will hunt and find you a suitable young man. He will likely come from the North, where the young men, I hear, are more handsome than here in the South. And we will have a wedding such as no one has seen before. Would that please you?"

"When do you hunt for the young man?" I asked.

"Soon. Very soon. Not later than next spring. It may take some time before I find him, of course. Perhaps a year or so."

"Of course," I said, having a deep misgiving about my father and this search.

"Handsome young men of good character do not grow upon trees. Yet I will look throughout California, from one end to the other. If I do not find him here I will look elsewhere, even in faraway Spain."

My hand hurt and that made things worse. But I was fortunate. I could have been back there on the rotting deck of the galleon, in the grip of the giant burro clam. I could be lying drowned beneath the waves. Or I could be at home, like Yris, getting ready to marry Don Roberto.