Circumnavigation - 28. Mysteries

Chapter 28: Mysteries

He pulled on a pair of shorts and walked out into the galley, where he made a pot of coffee, poured himself a cup, and then walked out on deck to check that all was well with Atlantis. After his inspection, Joel grabbed a second mug of coffee and sat down at the nav desk in the salon to check the latest weather information.

Little had changed since the night before, and Joel, though still angry, decided to get Atlantis underway.

Due to the sandy bottom, the anchors came up easily, negating any need for engines. The pre-dawn breeze was gentle and offshore, so Joel clipped on the safety harness and hauled up the mainsail and genneker. The breeze was light, but soon Atlantis was gliding south by southeast through the glassy waters of the Ionian Sea.

Joel stood at the helm, fuming, staring out at the serene waters, waiting for Trevor to appear.

They had been underway for an hour and a half when Trevor pulled on a pair of shorts and made his way to the cockpit. As Trevor came out of the salon door, into the pre-dawn twilight, he glanced sleepily at Joel and said, “Good job getting underway. I never felt a thing and slept right through it.”

“There’s coffee in the galley,” Joel said in a level tone, still looking out to sea with a scowl on his face.

Trevor blinked a few times, picking up on the fact that something was wrong, but he was still too fogged by sleep to be sure.

Trevor retreated to the galley, where he grabbed some coffee and returned to the cockpit. He stood looking at Joel, who seemed intent on watching the horizon. Joel’s normal friendly banter was conspicuous in its absence, and Trevor knew that either Joel was setting him up for a joke, or something was eating at him. “You’re quiet this morning,” Trevor observed, trying to figure out what was going on.

“I don’t feel like talking right now. I’ll wait until you’re more awake,” Joel said, still not looking at Trevor.

Trevor took a drink of coffee, and then, in a quiet, serious voice, said, “This sounds bad.”

“Uh huh.”

“You’re pissed about something, for real,” Trevor said.

Joel turned to glare at Trevor. “Fine. Yeah, I am: you. I wanted to learn about sailing across an ocean, so I’ve been reading your sea journal.”

Trevor’s eyes opened wide, his mind suddenly racing, trying to remember exactly what he’d said in the journal that could piss off Joel. He remembered mentioning Joel a few times, but not exactly how.

Glaring at Trevor’s stunned face, Joel said, “Don’t tell me you don’t know what the fuck this is about?”

Trevor began to shake his head, and then remembered something he’d written about Joel, “Uh, whatever I said, I think you’re taking it the wrong way...”

Joel snorted and flicked his thumb on the safety harness. “Does this jog any memories?”

Trevor stared at the harness, and then it clicked. “Oh, that... When I got knocked overboard, right?”

“No, I’m pissed off because you forgot to dot an ‘I’... Yeah, you almost fucking died out there and you never told me!”

Trevor swallowed once, and said softly, “I didn’t want you worrying about me.”

Joel rolled his eyes skyward. “Yeah, you’re sailing around the fucking world and nearly died on the first leg. What the fuck, man. Now I get why you’re so anal about me wearing this harness, but damn it, you nearly fucking died and it gave you nightmares, and you never even told me. Of fucking course I’d worry about you, that’s what friends do!”

Trevor began to pace. “Look, that journal is kinda private; you shouldn’t have been reading it–”

Joel snorted. “We both know I’m a nosy bastard with no respect for privacy, so get over it. I want to know why you didn’t tell me, for real.”

Trevor stopped and gazed out to sea. “Okay. I thought that if you knew I’d nearly died, you’d be upset–”

“Well, duh.”

“I’ve learned my lesson; that’s why I make such an issue of the safety harness. I was also worried that you’d try to talk me into going home instead of circumnavigating –”

“Duh, again,” Joel grumbled, intending to do exactly that.

Trevor nodded. “Plus I was embarrassed; what I did was dumb, a rookie mistake.”

Joel’s expression began to ease. “Okay, I get that. But you’re right, I think you should call off this circumnavigation. It’s more dangerous sailing alone, we both know that and this proves it. I’d stay with you if I could, and if it wasn’t for Lisa, I’d do it regardless. It would make my parents furious and I’d miss my senior year, but I’d do it. But Trev, I can’t leave Lisa alone for all that time, not with all the stuff going on. I love her Trev, I can’t... So turn around and come home. Hang out in the Caribbean if you have to, but turn around. If you do, I could stay with you a couple of extra weeks to get you across the Atlantic, that much I can do–”

Trevor shook his head sadly. “I can’t, man. My dad made it clear I have to continue. If I don’t, we’re back to him taking Atlantis away again. I also need to see my relatives in Australia; they might have information to help me find Ares, or at least more about what happened. Besides, I’d be in just as much danger hanging around the Caribbean for a year than I am circumnavigating. As for you staying, no way. I want you and Lisa to be happy, you have to go home. I know her father’s vacation is almost up, and she misses the hell out of you. Look, I’ll be real careful. You’ve seen how I am about the harness now, right? But Joel, I have to do this, for a lot of reasons. I don’t really have a lot of choice.”

Joel sighed in defeat, unable to counter Trevor’s reasoning, no matter how much he wanted to. Finally he said, “I want your promise; no matter what, when you’re at sea alone, you wear the fucking harness, right?”

Trevor looked Joel in the eye, and nodded. “I promise. I did that, every day after the accident. It scared the hell out of me.”

Joel sighed. “I’ll bet.” He lowered his voice, and asked, “Does it still give you nightmares?”

Trevor looked down at the deck, and then back up at Joel. “Yeah, sometimes, but not as often, or as bad.”

Joel put his hand on Trevor’s bare shoulder. “Sorry I got steamed, but when I read that, I flipped. Be careful, okay man?”

Trevor put his arm across Joel’s shoulders and gave him a one-armed hug before pulling away and smiling. “Okay, and thanks,” Trevor said, taking a seat in his beanbag.

Joel studied Trevor for a moment, and asked, “When you figured out it was the harness, you said, ‘Oh, that.’ What else is in there? I only read half; I was too pissed to read more.”

Trevor shrugged. “Nothing, I just said that when I realized what it was.”

Joel watched Trevor for a few moments, seeing a few telltale signs of unease in Trevor’s body language. “You’re not good at lying, you know that, right?” Joel asked, and then laughed.

Trevor looked up, surprised that Joel had read him so easily. Deciding that there wasn’t much point in arguing, Trevor leaped up and dashed towards the salon. “I want my journal back,” he said, racing for Joel’s cabin, knowing that Joel couldn’t immediately follow because he was manually conning Atlantis and it would take a few seconds to engage the autopilot.

Trevor darted into Joel’s cabin, slamming the door and locking it behind him before he began searching for his journal. He looked on the bed, rummaging through the sheet and under the pillows before checking the bedside drawers. Finding nothing, Trevor looked around. ‘Where would he put it?’ Trevor wondered, and then he noticed the silence, and it dawned on him that Joel wasn’t pounding on the door. ‘Uh oh.’

After a fast look in the wardrobe, Trevor opened the door and walked back out through the salon to the cockpit, where he found Joel, still at the helm, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

“Looking for something?” Joel asked, and then he held up the journal. “It’s not in my cabin anymore. I went and got it about half an hour before you got up.”

“You ass, give me that,” Trevor grumbled, moving closer.

“No can do, and don’t try tackling me; I’m at the helm. What we’re going to do is some recreational reading. I’ll read, you listen,” Joel said, snickering.

“Joel, give me that,” Trevor said, trying to grab for it, but Joel was ready and dodged.

“Nope, reading time. Now, we can do this slow, or you can get it over with all at once,” Joel said, correctly guessing that whatever Trevor was still hiding wasn’t serious, just embarrassing.

“I’ll get you for this,” Trevor grumbled, sitting down on the far side of the cockpit.

Joel kept grinning, flipping the journal open to where he’d left off, and reciting Trevor’s account of crossing the Atlantic, reading over but not repeating the sadder parts, where Trevor wrote of being homesick and lonely, or having nightmares. Then, Joel’s expression brightened, and Trevor cringed.

“I like this one,” Joel said, smirking as he began reading out loud, “July 14^th, Lisbon to Gibraltar. I’m on my way to meet Joel! I want to keep calm, but I can’t. Having a friend aboard will be so awesome; somebody to see stuff with, and somebody to talk to. I need that right now, there’s so much going on in my head over what happened back home with Dad. I still can’t believe Joel is really coming. He’s such a great friend, fun and supportive, and smart too, plus he’s great eye candy. Lisa is so lucky.”

Joel turned to look at Trevor with an evil grin. “Smart? And great eye candy, am I? And Lisa is so lucky? You do realize that I’m going to be reminding you of this on a regular basis, right?”

Trevor, blushing slightly, shrugged. “Hey, I’d been alone a long time, so even the seagulls were looking good.”

Joel shook his head. “I’m not buying it. This is clear written proof of sexual harassment!”

“Is that the only phrase you know?” Trevor shot back, laughing.

“It’s the most applicable one. So I’m eye candy, am I? Just a piece of meat for you to stare at? I feel so taken advantage of!”

Trevor laughed again, still blushing, embarrassed but glad that Joel was back to his normal, happy self.

Joel drummed his fingers on the helm. “Now how about telling me where the hell we’re going? Or are you just going to sit there and stare at me, you perv?”

Trevor shook his head. “We’re going to an island, but I won’t say where. I’ll say this much; we’re going to see a mystery, something that nobody can really explain. I read about it a few years ago, but I didn’t realize it was on our route until I thought to check its exact location,” Trevor said.

“It’s somewhere in the Aegean, that much I know,” Joel said, giving Trevor a suspicious look.

Trevor shook his head. “Nope, it’s on the way, and it’s a Greek island.” Trevor leaned in to study the navigation display and added, “Thanks to you getting us underway early, and if the winds pick up as forecast, we’ll be there before dark.” Trevor made a few adjustments to the course plot, and then told Joel, “Just follow the course I’ve laid in.”

Joel looked at the new course, which had only changed slightly. “Okay, you want us to round the southwest corner of Kefallonia Island closer, one mile out instead of ten, but the rest of the course is unchanged. So, that means it’s something we’ll see as we sail by, right?”

Trevor snickered. “Nope, we’re going ashore. I’m just not saying where.”

Joel checked the time and weather plots. “If we’ll be there before dark, it has to be either Kefallonia, or the next island to the south, Zakynthos. Once past that we’re out of sight of land until we round Cape Matapan, and that’ll be at night.”

Trevor shrugged, and then smirked, gazing out to sea.

“You’re driving me nuts,” Joel grumbled.

“That’s a very short trip, going somewhere you already are,” Trevor quipped.

Joel flipped Trevor off and laughed. “Paybacks are a bitch, just remember that.”

Officer Gonzalez had told differing versions of his story concerning Trevor around the department, each different in timing and detail. His plan was simple; a classic Canary Trap, long beloved in the intelligence community as a method of detecting leaks. All he believed he needed to do was see which version surfaced, and that would give him the identity of the leak.

Sitting in his office, doing paperwork, he was expecting the call that came in.

“Gonzalez,” he said, after picking up the phone.

“Jim Ainsworth here. I thought you’d like to know, I’ve received another anonymous

e-mail. I’m forwarding it to your home address now.”

Officer Gonzalez logging into his account, and waited a few seconds before checking the server. Seeing the new e-mail, he opened it,

To whom it may concern,

Atlantis will be transiting the Suez Canal on August 25^th, with two aboard.

Regards,

Anonymous

“Short and sweet,” Officer Gonzales said, checking his notes to see which version that date most closely fit.

“Any idea who’s sending these, or how they’re tracking Atlantis,” Jim asked, assuming the information to be as accurate as it had been before.

“I can’t get into that at this time, except to say that as far as I know, they aren’t actually tracking the boat, and that date isn’t accurate. However, if at some point you do find out the transit date, please let me know, even after the fact,” Officer Gonzalez said.

“You’re trying to find out whose sending the e-mails, I know that much. The one thing I can confirm is that it wasn’t Dirk. He was with me when it arrived,” Jim said.

Officer Gonzalez smiled. “That proves nothing; some e-mail apps have a delivery timer, but it’s not your client that I suspect in this. Speaking of your client... You’ll be getting my questions in your inbox in a day or two.

After the call, Officer Gonzalez circled a name in his notes. ‘Perfect match. Sergeant Pierson in dispatch, so he’s my leaker,’ he thought, unaware that Pierson could have, and indeed had, answered a few innocent-seeming questions from Detective Alfred.

By noon, Atlantis was past the halfway point between Italy and Kefallonia. Trevor checked the radars. Seeing nothing within twenty miles, he grinned and said, “Okay, turn Atlantis into the wind, tighten the foresail sheet and the main sheet as far as they go, then continue the turn past the eye of the wind and set the autopilot to ten degrees off the wind. Tighten the mainsheet once we’re into the wind to keep the boom in place, and just let her come to a halt. Time for some target practice.”

“Okay,” Joel said, as he began the turn to starboard “Why not set the autopilot for directly into the wind?”

“The foresail and mainsail would luff and flap, kind of like a flag does. That could do damage if the wind picks up, but in this case, we want to keep Atlantis as stable as possible so we can shoot. Holding her just a few degrees off of directly into the wind is called ‘small hove to’, and it’s a good position to use when you want to come to a halt with the sails up, but keep them from flapping around.”

While Joel conned Atlantis into position, Trevor gathered up the empty beer bottles and a few empty soft drink cans. Then, he went forward, to his crew cabin, and opened his stash spot to retrieve his revolver, two pairs of disposable earplugs, and one of the three boxes of ammunition.

Gun in hand, Trevor walked aft, joining Joel by the side rail. He handed Joel one set of earplugs and said, “We’re barely making steerageway, so we’ll have easy targets to warm up. We’ve only got one box of ammo to play with, so that’s twenty-five shots apiece; I need to keep the other two boxes in case I can’t get any more until I get home.”

They both put in their disposable earplugs. “Cool, I haven’t been shooting in awhile,” Joel said, taking the chrome-plated .357 and checking to be sure it was loaded.

Trevor nodded, and hauled back to hurl a beer bottle, sending it arcing through the air to land with a splash seventy feet away.

The beer bottle bobbed to the surface and floated on its side for a few moments, and then took on enough water to settle, neck up, in the gently rolling sea.

Joel flicked off the safety, and used a two-hand stance to carefully aim.

With a bone-shaking crack, the gun fired, and a small splash of water appeared a foot to the left of the bottle. Joel squinted, keeping both eyes open, and lined up the sights again. It took him four shots, but then the bottle disappeared in a splash of foam, its neck blown off.

Trevor tossed out another bottle, and Joel sank it on the second shot. Grinning, Joel flipped the revolver open and began reloading. “I’m kinda rusty, but I’ll bet you’re worse,” Joel said, hanging the reloaded revolver to Trevor.

Joel picked up a beer bottle and hurled it, watching as it landed eighty feet from Atlantis.

“That’s farther than you had to shoot,” Trevor said, smiling and taking careful aim. Trevor held his breath for a moment, easing back on the trigger as the sights lined up, until the gun fired. Trevor lowered the gun and grinned, pointing at the dying splash where the bottle had once been. “Got it in one, keep ‘em coming.”

Joel threw another bottle, to about the same distance, and Trevor sank it in two. “Show-off,” Joel grumbled, hurling the third bottle to ninety feet, where Trevor sank it with a grazing hit from a single shot.

Trevor, grinning like the cat that ate the canary, looked at Joel and said. “I’ve got two shots left. I’ll bet I can sink the next bottle no matter how far you throw it.”

“What’s the bet?” Joel asked.

“Loser makes the winner dinner,” Trevor said.

Joel shook his head and smirked. “No bet: with your cooking, I’d lose either way!”

“You ass,” Trevor mumbled, and then gave Joel an appraising glance. “Okay, you name the bet.”

“How about... if you lose, you tell me where we’re going this afternoon. If you win, I’ll forget what was in your journal about me for a week instead of busting you for it every few hours.”

Trevor gave Joel a skeptical look. “You’ll just bust me for other stuff instead.”

“I’ll add sexual harassment to the list...” Joel said, grinning.

Trevor laughed and nodded. “You’re on. Throw the bottle.”

Joel gave Trevor a wicked grin. “Did I ever tell you that in junior high I played baseball? I was a pitcher.”

“Oh, great,” Trevor mumbled, as Joel hauled back and hurled a bottle, grunting with the effort, sending it arcing high into the sky, humming through the air to land with a large splash nearly two hundred feet away. The bottle landed base-first, and its speed carried it two feet under the water. Filling rapidly, it broached the surface for a moment, and Trevor fired, missing by over a yard with his first shot, and then correcting, and more by luck than skill – handguns are not accurate at long range – he sent a round right through the neck on his second and final shot.

“Holy fuck, that’s good shooting,” Joel said, a note of awe in his voice.

“You lose,” Trevor said, and then added, “It was a lucky shot, but I still win!”

“So, this means I can’t rag on you for the eye-candy thing, or the rest, for a week? Shit... That’ll leave me with barely a week to make up for it before I go home,” Joel said, pouting.

Trevor laughed and reloaded. They fired another six rounds each, and then Trevor got Atlantis underway again, to give them moving targets. They fired from the rear railing, and although Joel improved, Trevor bested him in targets sunk by nearly a third.

After firing off their last sets, Trevor lifted one of the cockpit seats, pulling out a tool kit. “I use this for my cleaning kit,” Trevor said, opening up the toolbox. Using a scrap of rag and some light oil, he cleaned and swabbed out the barrel and chambers, and then used the final six rounds from the ammo box to reload.

“You practice a lot, huh?” Joel asked, when Trevor got back from returning the gun to its hiding place.

Trevor smiled sadly. “My dad used to take me shooting at the range pretty often, before things started going bad. Julie and I used to shoot pretty often when it was just us aboard, so that helps too. When I get back home, I’ll take you out shooting, but we have to be way offshore with no boats around. Gunfire at sea is an emergency signal, so we have to be sure no one is within earshot.”

“That was fun, but I think I prefer regular ear protectors to ear plugs, because my ears are ringing,” Joel said.

Trevor nodded. “Mine too. I have a pair at home, but if I kept ‘em on Atlantis, I’d have to hide them with the gun. If a customs search turned up the ear protectors, they’d know a gun was aboard.”

“Makes sense... and hey, I wonder how much difference it makes shooting from a moving deck? It sure seemed harder.”

“Yeah, it is. I’m not really all that good; Julie could whip me easy,” Trevor said, smiling as he remembered Julie, and how big a part of his life she’d been.

Joel arched an eyebrow. “You seemed pretty damn good today; you beat me.”

“That’s because you suck,” Trevor said, grinning wickedly and earning a finger in reply.

By four in the afternoon, the western cliffs of Kefallonia came into view to their left, giving Trevor and Joel a spectacular view. As they rounded the southwestern tip of the island, Trevor took the helm, following the coast around.

“You’ve left our course,” Joel said, eying the plot, and then glancing at the island. “We’re going to Kefallonia.”

Trevor shrugged. “I’m not telling.”

“You ass,” Joel grumbled, looking at the navigation plot again, trying to figure out their destination.

After heading east for three miles, Trevor engaged the engines and furled the sails, turning to port and entering the Argostoli Gulf, which is two miles wide and eight miles long, cutting into the heart of Kefallonia Island from south to north.

“It has to be Kefallonia, there’s no exit from this bay,” Joel declared.

Trevor laughed and nodded. “Yeah, I might as well admit that much,” he said, and then pointed at the nav plot. “See this big peninsula? We’re going to the northern tip, just north of Argostoli.”

“What’s there?” Joel asked, growing ever more curious.

“Katavothres,” Trevor replied cryptically.

Joel checked the chart, seeing no towns at the tip of the peninsula, and asked, “What’s that?”

“A place,” Trevor replied, snickering. “Relax, we’ll be there in a few minutes. I’m going to anchor close offshore. What we want to see is right on the shore. According to a photo I saw, there’s a rock and sand beach, so we can swim in.

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what we’re going to see,” Joel replied, smirking.

Trevor flipped Joel off. “Okay, you stay here and I’ll go in. Then you’ll never know.”

“I’ll get you for this, count on it,” Joel replied, chuckling.

Trevor spotted a distinctive lighthouse­ built in the form of a Greek temple – A landmark he’d been looking for – and rounded the point it was on. After a few hundred yards, Trevor anchored close in, forty feet off the rocky beach, offshore of the old waterwheel he’d been expecting.

They could see patches of sand between rocky areas, and with a laugh and a yell, side by side, Trevor and Joel dove overboard, racing for the shore.

Jogging up onto the tiny beach, Trevor led the way to a pathway that paralleled the shore. A few yards inland stood a modern-styled building, a nightclub, which was closed during the day. Joel glanced around, puzzled. “Okay, we’re in Greece, next to a nightclub. What exactly is it we’re here to see?”

Trevor chuckled at Joel’s impatient curiosity, and pointed at the old waterwheel, fifty feet along the shore to their west. “Follow the path to that.”

Joel, walking quickly on the hot concrete, headed for the waterwheel as Trevor followed, wondering if Joel would figure it out on his own.

Standing beside the waterwheel, which was rusty and broken, Joel said, “This looks like it hasn’t worked in decades.”

“Yeah, for about fifty years, if I remember right. There’s still water running in the sluiceway though.”

Joel glanced down into the concrete channel, seeing that the water, about eight inches deep, was flowing strongly around the remains of the derelict water wheel. “Okay, you brought me here to see a broken water wheel? I’m stoked to be in Greece, but, ah...”

Trevor snickered. “Notice anything strange about the water?”

Joel looked thoughtfully at the flowing water, and then followed the channel to his left with his eyes, seeing that it entered the sea a few yards away, its entrance protected by a tiny breakwater. “Hey, the water is coming in from the sea, not going out to it. What is it, a tidal thing?”

Trevor shook his head. “Pretty much zero tides in this area.”

Perplexed, Joel turned to his left, walking beside the sluiceway for a few yards as it passed under the pathway and cascaded into a rocky depression a few yards across and several times as long. The first thing Joel noticed was that the water level in the depression was several feet below the level in the sluice. “Hey, this is below sea level but its right on the beach. Is it pumped?”

Trevor shook his head. “Nope, it’s natural. They built the waterwheel to make use of it. This has been running for thousands of years; even the ancient Greeks wrote about it.”

Joel stood and stared for a few moments, bewildered. “If there are no tides, then what the hell causes it? Wherever the water goes would fill up.” Joel stared at the water sink, blinked a few times, and then muttered, “Whoa, this is freaky.”

Trevor looked down into the pit. “Yeah, ‘Katavothres’ means ‘The sucking holes.’ There’s nothing else like it on Earth, according to what I read. The seawater enters this sinkhole and pours through cracks in the rocks to disappear underground. Its flow never changes.”

“It’s kinda impossible,” Joel said, scratching his head. “How the hell does it work?”

“That’s why I remember it; the favorite theory is that it’s a natural saline-density pump twenty miles long. Back in the ‘60s some researchers poured tons of dye into it, and then two weeks later, it came out in a cave lake about twenty miles northeast of here, and then a couple of days later it came out in some springs on the coastline about a mile farther away, on the other side of the island from here. I was reading about the differences between salt water and fresh water, and they used this as an example.”

Joel stared at the water, and then looked to the northeast. “Are you sure about the direction? That takes it across the bay to the mountains on the other side.”

Trevor nodded. “I’ll show you on a map when we get back to Atlantis, but yeah. That’s just one of the things that makes this so weird. There’s a cave system under the floor of the bay, but it’s watertight and the water comes in here instead.”

Going from memory, Trevor tried as best he could to explain....

Trevor’s task was far from easy, for the system is complex. The western entrances to the cave system are located at the northern tip of the Argostoli peninsula. As the cave system, most likely chambers filled with rubble and gravel, run northeast under Kefallonia's central mountains, rainwater enters the system.

Saltwater is denser then freshwater, so if a large U-shaped tube is filed with saltwater on one side and freshwater on the other, the saltwater side will have a lower level. Also, because it is less dense, fresh water floats on top of salt water until it mixes.

The theory is that the cave system begins deep under Katavothres, and slopes gradually upwards as it crosses the island. Once the freshwater has been mixed in the island’s center, the now-lighter brackish water continues northeastward, finally emerging at a spring by the shore. Because of the density difference, the water level is a few feet higher and thus above sea level, causing an outflow. The system cannot work in reverse due to the downward slope and the pure salt water in the southwestern half. The entire system is, in essence, a linear fluid pump using the density differences of fresh and salt water as its driver.

After several tries and clarifications, Joel understood enough to shake his head in puzzlement. “Okay, this is truly weird. Awesome, too. If you’d have told me you were taking me to a hole where seawater has been flowing in, but not out, for thousands of years, I wouldn’t have believed it, and the water wheel just makes it weirder. Are we going to see where it comes out?”

Trevor thought for a few moments. “It’s a long sail around to the other side of the island, and it’s the wrong way. We can if you want; the cave lake that’s part of the system is supposed to be pretty cool, but the wind is changing and we’ll miss our weather window to the Aegean. And by the way, I’ve got somewhere even stranger to show you tomorrow.”

“I’m glad you showed me this, but if the wind is changing, let’s get to the Aegean while we can. So, what’s the next place you’re taking me too?”

Trevor smiled. “You liked seeing the volcano we sailed around – Stromboli – right? How about seeing an active volcano from the inside?”

Joel arched both eyebrows. “You’re bullshitting me. Where are we going?”

“Atlantis awaits,” Trevor said, pointing at his boat but meaning something very different.

Atlantis' Page (see what Atlantis looks like)

© 2010 C James

Please let me know what you think; good, bad, or indifferent.

Please give me feedback, and please don’t be shy if you want to criticize! The feedback thread for this story is in my Forum. Please stop by and say "Hi!"

Many thanks to my editor EMoe for editing and for his support, encouragement, beta reading, and suggestions.

Special thanks to Graeme, for beta-reading and advice.

Thanks also to Talonrider and MikeL for beta reading.

A big Thank You to RedA for Beta reading and advice, and to Bondwriter for final Zeta-reading and advice.

Any remaining errors are mine alone.