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hand. None of any of that had stopped him from talking.
    When he had turned from the rail, Bonham had been holding out the gin bottle to him with one hand and wiping his mouth with the back of the other, the wheel’s uppermost spoke held firmly in the crook of his arm. When the hand came away, the mouth was seen to be grinning widely over his bad teeth. “So you think you liked it, hunh?” he demanded. “Well, that’s only the start.”
    Vicariously, though he obviously had none of his own really, he was able to share Grant’s elation. In contrast to Grant he had worn no wet shirt and had not toweled off and was letting the wind dry him, but he wasn’t cold. Trickles of seawater continued every now and then to run down his face from his hair as he spoke. He had ducked his head back into the water face up before climbing aboard, Grant had noticed, and the sea had slicked back his hair as well as any comb ever could, so that in contrast to Grant’s wildly disordered hair he looked positively well-groomed. He could not stop grinning apparently, as he accepted the bottle back, as though he really did share Grant’s enthusiasm, and Grant suddenly felt—(gratefully; though he did not know to whom, or to what)—that they two had established a rapport between them with this dive which almost no one—for instance Ali, a nondiver, or Grant’s mistress, or her husband—could share who was not a diver himself. And maybe all of them couldn’t share it, unless they had been down in the cathedral cave with Bonham themselves.
    “Here. Have another one,” Bonham grinned, extending the bottle after taking a second slug himself. “Warm you up.”
    It was the second of a great many rounds they were to down before the day, and the evening, were over. Grant was plain full of all sorts of technical questions, and he kept them coming one after the other. For instance, when Bonham had taken off his lung at the boat, instead of hanging onto the ladder and trying to keep his head out of water in the swells, like Grant, he had descended to ten or twelve feet, below the swell, and shucked his tank off over his head like a man taking off a sweater, while never letting the mouthpiece out of his mouth, and then had swum back up to the boat with it. Why had he done that? It was a keen trick, and had somebody taught it to him? And did Bonham have that much extra air left? because he, Grant, had been completely out when they reached the boat—unless of course he had pulled the reserve.
    Yes, Bonham said, he had had more air left, because Grant didn’t conserve his. “You remember when you went through the rock fissure into the big cave? You used a lot of extra air there because you got a little panicky. And probly a couple of other times. Like when you first went in.” But that was nothing; after a while Grant would learn to save air both by relaxing and by never breathing until he really needed it.
    As for taking the bottle off over his head down below the swell, it was just easier. No, nobody taught it to him. He thought it up himself. But probly lots of other divers did it too. Just because it was easier. “And in this racket, anything that is easier, requires less effort and energy, is the better way to do a thing. Simply because saving energy saves air.”
    “Well, what about taking me through that narrow place like that? Isn’t that a pretty advanced maneuver? for somebody like me? on their very first dive?”
    Bonham shook his head no. “I don’t usually take people through there in their first sea dive. I don’t usually take them in that cave. That’s true. But you’re pretty cool. A lot cooler than you think you are, for some strange reason. Usually it’s just the reverse. People think they’re cool and they aint.
    “Anyway, I was right there watching. I could have got you out all right.”
    “Yeah, I saw that! After I got on through!”
    Grant laughed.
    Bonham grinned. He had decided, he suddenly interjected, to dock