Melina watched as the snorkeler swam nearer and nearer to her island. His boat was anchored a fifty yards behind him. The island set just outside the inner edge of Hawk's Channel south of the line of Florida Keys. She was sunning on the sun deck on the very top of her unusual home. Her skin was already covered with a flawless light tan showing no marks of any kind. Her long blonde hair was sun bleached with white streaks. Other than her eyelashes and eyebrows she had no other hair on her slim sleek body. When she saw the swimmer tilt his head forward, looking at something on the bottom, she jumped up and ran away from him and entered a door in a small structure above the deck.
She descended a spiral stair into a large room and walked to the seaward side of the house. Looking through the huge one-way glass windows she observed as he swam closer to her domain. His head lifted and he looked at the strange house. It looked as if a spaceship, a flying saucer, had landed on the small island. Part of it projected half way out over the water on one side. A large tube dropped from the bottom of the craft and descended below the surface of the ocean.
The snorkeler noticed that the water was getting deeper as he neared the island. The water was now thirty feet deep. It had only been ten feet deep at the boat. He could now see that there was an underwater room below the house. There was a small coral reef close to the room, part of the reef almost touching one of the large windows. There were fan corals, brain corals, stag and elk horn corals, sea fans, plate corals, clumps of fire coral, and other corals growing on the edge of a dead coral wall over a cave beneath the coral. He lifted his head and looked around above the water. He looked back to his boat, it was almost 70 yards away. He saw a large sign on a piling sticking above the water off to the side of the way he had come. He kicked over to where he could see the front of the sign. It read,
*BEWARE-WARNING*
You are entering an experimental shark feeding station.
There are several feedings during the day and night.
The sharks are conditioned to come to the sound of a signal in the water.
The sharks are in a feeding frenzy when they arrive in this area.
*WARNING*
!!!BEWARE!!!
The diver looked around quickly; he looked at his boat, then looked at the island. He started swimming toward the island. Melina smiled as he swam strongly. He was good, he was a very good swimmer, his kick with his fins moved him through the water at a very fast pace. He had twenty yards to go. Her finger hovered over the signal button. She knew that it was almost an hour before the next feeding and that most of the sharks were just now slowly moving toward the island from far away. She smiled and shook her head. She dropped her hand to her lap.
She quietly said, "Here, Dwight!" She felt his weight against her shoulder and lifted her hand to pet the massive head. She pointed to the swimmer. She said, "Hold!" The huge half Rotty and half Pit turned and ran off. She watched as the big brindle colored dog appeared near the top of the ladder from the water to the top of the rock. The dog dropped on his belly in the shade of a small stunted palm near the ladder. She picked up her little white bikini and slipped it on then covered it with a white lace cover-up.
Melina stood and walked to where she could follow the swimmer as he neared the ladder. He grabbed the ladder and twisted to look behind him. He reached down and removed his flippers, then pushed the mask and snorkel up off his face and started up the ladder.
Melina sucked in her breath. He was gorgeous, tall, handsome and with a tan, well muscled body, a body to die for. He wore a well filled tight little black Speedo suit. He paused at the top of the ladder and looked around. He put his things down beside the ladder, and took a hesitant step forward. His head snapped around and looked at the snarling mouth of Dwight. Water sprayed from his light brown hair as he quickly turned. He froze. Melina pressed the microphone button and said, "Please remain calm and still, Sir. The dog will not harm you if you obey my instructions. Now, please, follow the dog. Here Dwight. Slow, Dwight." The man followed the dog.
She swiveled her chair to watch them enter the large room. He followed Dwight to stand before her. She smiled and said, "Good afternoon Captain Samuel B. Adamson, United States Marine Corps. You are welcome here because of your service to our country. Sit down please, could I offer you something to drink? I have ice water, lemonade, or beer."
He stared at her for a moment then grinned, "Thank you for your hospitality, Ma'am, lemonade sounds very refreshing, please." She stood and walked to a refrigerator behind a bar on the back side of the room. There was no way he could take his eyes from her beautiful form. He was totally captivated. She wore a thin white lace cover up over a tiny white bikini. He felt a stirring in his loins he had not felt in months. She returned carrying a small tray with two glasses. She gracefully placed one drink before him and sat in her chair facing him. She smiled, "Captain Adamson, I am Melina Lee. This is my home. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"
"Ma'am my visit to your home is due to sheer stupidity on my part. I am on leave from the Marine Corps. I lived in Miami a few years ago and my hobby then was searching for old ship wrecks. I still had some of my old wreck charts and I thought I would relax by doing a little wreck hunting. I never touch anything on a wreck. If I find something significant I take pictures.
"Anyway I was drifting with the tide hanging on the boat's anchor line so if I saw something I could just drop the anchor and investigate. I am afraid I wandered too far from my boat following what I thought was a trail of ballast stones (Ballast stones were stones used in the bottom of old sailing vessels to counterbalance the force of the wind on the sails trying to tip the ship over.). Please forgive me for disturbing your afternoon."
"You are forgiven Captain, and you are correct about the ballast stones, the wreck lies scattered from this little island on the same line for another quarter of a mile. There is no more than a pile of ballast stones and a few scattered bits of wooden timbers now. She was a Chesapeake Bay Scow carrying a cargo of ballast stones to Key West in 1794. She grounded on the shallow coral reef near where your boat is anchored. The wind or tide moved her this way spilling the ballast stones through a hole in her hull as she went until she filled with water and sunk."
She felt her heart jump at the beautiful smile that spread across his face, a handsome and strong face that spoke of honesty and honor. The bright sky blue eyes contained no guile or deceit. He said, "Oh! MY GOD! You found out all that? WONDERFUL! That is simply amazing, tell me how you did it."
"It is not too difficult if you are very, very lucky. I found a description of the wreck in Spanish documents on the internet. People forget that Spain owned Florida up until about 1822. The old Spanish were wonderful record keepers in those days. Many of the records are now available on the net. The ballast stone was for use on Spanish vessels so they had to account for it. They salvaged some of it from time to time. The scow was strictly an unarmed heavy duty barge with sails."
Sam smiled and shook his head, "Miss Lee, you can't believe how much you have thrilled me with this. This was my dream and you did it!. For six years I hunted wrecks, and I found many of them. I was only able to identify those that had been found before and identified. Will it be possible for me to look at the actual wreck in the next day or two?"
"Please call me Mel, or Melina. Yes I can show you the wreck later. We need to get you to your boat in a little while. I have a team of people from the University of Miami Shark Studies Team who will be here soon to observe the shark behavior. They can run you to your boat. How long are you going to be here on leave Sam?"
"I have two more weeks left, I have no family anymore so I am just drifting around."
