THE EDGE OF THE EDGE 375 



feeling of doubt that I donned the helmet and went sliding into 

 the blue. I landed a few seconds later, deeply conscious of the 

 pressure, and turned and looked about. A heavy weight seemed 

 to be pressing on my abdomen and chest. The surface was a 

 long, long distance away; my hose curled up behind me in a 

 wide arc, a snaky black line that became increasingly indistinct 

 until at its further end it blurred away. Even the boat was ob- 

 scure and somewhat nebulous. 



I peered about, trying to get some hint of direction. Above 

 and to all sides existed nothing but blue water, a filmy evanes- 

 cent blue that baffled description, unrelieved by any solid ob- 

 jects. Leaning far backwards, I looked towards the surface. 

 Still nothing but liquid blue, perhaps a trace lighter than the 

 color to each side. There was no such thing as direction. North, 

 east, south and west were all the same. Blue water everywhere; 

 one was drowned in it, lost in azure. 



Only the sand at my feet, heaped in little piles between the 

 rocks, helped to stabilize, to give a hint where I might find the 

 edge of the cliff. I sensed that it was close because my naked 

 flesh could detect a faint cold current coming up from the 

 depths. Hesitating, I turned my body this way and that, trying 

 to catch the direction of the current. But it was too slight, too 

 vague to help. Then my feet gave me the clue. The bottom was 

 uneven, very regularly uneven. I looked at the piles of sand. 

 They were heaped in hundreds of little mounds, long waving 

 lines that faded into the blue immensity. They were similar 

 to the lines I had seen when I watched the tide flowing by 

 Inagua's westernmost point. I guessed that, like those others, 

 they would run at right angles to the shore opposite the direc- 

 tion of the current. My course was parallel with them. 



On I pressed, leaning hard against the water. Presently the 

 cold became more pronounced, a gentle sort of chill that merely 

 gave a hint of what lay before, like the faint coolness that some- 



