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the quiet? Or was it the highceilinged dimness? Or was it maybe the nearness of God? the nearness of Unknowable? Embarrassed, he shifted away sideways, afraid Bonham might notice what was happening inside his tight, scanty bikini, and the feeling began to subside. Anyway he knew one thing for certain. One day while he was here in Ganado Bay he was going to come out here alone—come alone if he had to rent a rowboat and aqualung from Bonham’s competitor—make a dive down here alone, strip off this damned bikini, swim around this cave stark naked with his erection, then sit on this toadstool and masturbate, come like a fury, and watch his milky semen swirl and mingle with the green water which itself swirled about his body with every tiniest movement.
    Maybe he’d hire a nondiving native to handle the boat for him. The very secrecy of it, the native up there working the boat and him down here masturbating, made it a tinglingly exciting prospect. But, was this not a too-ambitious project for a neophyte diver just starting out: jerking off underwater? Well, he would find out. The idea of masturbating made him think of his new girl in New York. She, it had turned out, had loved that.
    Bonham touched him gently again, on the shoulder, and Grant started guiltily. When he looked over, the other was motioning upward with one hand and beckoning with the other. When Grant asked “Why?” by shrugging up his shoulders and spreading out his hands, Big Al pointed to his watch. Looking at his own Grant saw they had been under 32 minutes, and could hardly believe it. And it reminded him of something else. During his last few breaths it had seemed to Grant that it was getting slightly harder to breathe each time, but the difference was so slight he had thought he was imagining it. Now he tried again and found it was distinctly harder to suck air from his lung. His neophyte’s nervousness returned to him suddenly. But neither man had yet pulled his reserve valve!? Grabbing his mouthpiece with one hand and pointing to his tank with the other, Grant made a heaving motion with his chest as if trying to breathe. Bonham nodded. But then he followed the nod by fanning his hands back and forth across each other in a gesture of “Take it easy; don’t worry.” Gesturing Grant to follow, and without pulling his reserve, he took off from the toadstool with a little leap upward like a bird.
    But it was more like a foot-winged Mercury than a bird, Grant thought as he followed. He was no longer nervous. Underwater at least, he now trusted Bonham completely. Forgotten was the momentary anger at Bonham’s having taken him through the narrow fissure.
    Ahead of him Big Al swam upward on a long diagonal straight across the length of the green cathedral. He did not turn off to the right toward the fissure. Grant assumed, rightly, that there was another entrance—which made him feel good, because he had no liking for the fissure. As he rose on the long diagonal, the air in his tank expanded as the pressure lessened and it became easier to breathe and he understood why Bonham had motioned him not to worry. Only if they had had to descend again into greater pressure, he remembered now from the books, would they have needed their reserve valves. Grant remembered to exhale frequently as he rose to avoid air embolism and when, as he swam, he looked at his Automatic Decompression Meter Bonham had sold him it showed there was no need to worry about decompression. So they were leaving, or—rather—returning.
    Ten yards ahead of him Bonham swam into and then out of some of the slanting rays of sunlight which crossed the cave, strangely bright and glowing when he was in one, almost invisible when he was in the darker water inbetween. Grant could not resist pausing and turning for a look back. He felt a curious sad tranquillity, toward all inevitability, because he had to leave. But when he looked, he found he was already forty-five or fifty feet above the