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His feet touched bottom.

The mud, its thick, clammy consistency, was up to mid-chest. He experienced the weight of it now, the encompassing pressure. The top surface of the island was just above his eye level. He glanced up. They were all looking down at him — quizzical, dismayed. Phil Kemp's mouth, his eyes showed a trace of amused contempt. Gloria Rand was offering concern and hopefulness. And there were Spider and Peter directly above, ready to help if he needed them.

He tried to move his feet, to feel and search with them. It took a lot of strength to move them even an inch at a time.

There. His right foot had found something. He couldn't make out the shape as a clue to what it was. He hoped for a can of beer.

He took three deep, filling breaths and held the third, clenched his eyes and mouth shut just before going under. Rather than bend and reach to one side, he went down in a well-balanced squat, both feet planted evenly. The sensation of being completely submerged in mud was strange, eerie, especially on his face and hands. The mud prevented any normal pace or motion — he had to push to bring his arms down. That alone took so much time he was sure he would run out of breath. He groped on the bottom with his right hand. His fingers went around something cylindrical, slippery. He got as good a grip as he could on it.

How long had he been under? His lungs were already beginning to burn. His throat felt as though it were being inflated. He had the urge to open his eyes. Was that instinctive — the impulse to see death and thereby somehow prevent it?

He concentrated his strength in his legs and shoulders. He pushed upward. The mud resisted, gave but only very gradually. A fact flashed like an alarm from his memory: one cubic yard of ordinary dirt weighs one ton. Mud at least double that.

His lungs were on fire now, worse each second. His throat seemed about to burst. At the deepest his head had been under twelve inches, perhaps sixteen. Where the hell was the surface, air? Under pressure of the mud he lost the ability to determine position, couldn't make out how much his legs were bent, so he couldn't tell how much progress he'd made. He had never held his breath this long. His legs were trembling, demanding that he give up.

He opened his eyes.

He was surprised to see the island. But only half his head was above the surface. The mud level was across the bridge of his nose. He still couldn't breathe. Excruciating, the polarity: life within easy view, death with a heavy hold on him. Both life and death inspired him to keep shoving upward, and when his nose finally emerged, he snorted out loudly and drew in through his nostrils. Revitalized, before long he was standing, handing up what he had found. A can of something.

He felt wonderfully exhilarated, like laughing, a victorious feeling.

Peter shined the light on the can.

Spider wiped the mud from it, exposing some of its metallic red and yellow and the words:

OVEN CLEANER

It seemed to Brydon that everyone moaned at once. He felt the focus of their disappointment; his own was converted into anger. Again he pumped his lungs full and went under.

He had learned from before, knew what to expect, didn't waste energy. He went under with his arms already down at his sides. That saved time. He grabbled along the bottom, found something. He pushed upward but this time didn't try so hard, gauged the limit of ascent the mud would permit and kept to it, and although he didn't have breath to spare when he reached the surface he also didn't have to endure the agonies of near suffocation.

What he brought up this time was a plastic container of margarine, the newer, more convenient kind of semiliquified margarine that could be squirted. At least it was an improvement, something edible.

Spider Leaks had now taken his clothes off. Some of them tried not to look at him. He was a middleweight with a tight, sinewy body, hard from work. Lean waisted, stomach muscles defined.

Covered with mud, Brydon was darker than Spider. Brydon's eyes and teeth, set in contrast, now flashed whiter. He told Spider how best to go under, what the dangers were.

Spider nodded. He didn't appear frightened, although at that moment his pulse rate was up to one hundred twenty from a normal seventy-two. When he lowered himself in he uttered a string of swear words, as though to counter the offensiveness of the mud.

Brydon took hold of the edge of the island, tried to pull himself up and out. He struggled, was stuck. Peter and Dan Mandel grabbed the belts to haul Brydon up. He never would have made it alone.

Sitting on the edge for a breather, Brydon watched Spider sink from sight, and he hoped for the black man. The mud showed no sign where Spider had gone under. Brydon watched the spot. For a moment, in his imagination, the mud was animate, a malicious creature that had swallowed Spider and was now digesting him. It seemed Spider had been under a long time — too long. The worst had happened, Brydon thought, and he wondered if there was something important that he hadn't told Spider. But then, Spider's head broke the surface of the mud and slowly became totally visible.

Spider handed up what he'd found.
“PUREE DE MARRONS NATURE”
the fancy decorated can said. Mashed chestnuts imported from France.

Brydon grimaced inside. Chestnuts in any form were one of the few things he truly disliked. He stood and went down the island a ways, like a trout fisherman hoping a new location would bring better luck.

There, and at other places, he and Spider continued to search for food until they were exhausted. Hauled out, they lay face up on the island. Every inch of their bodies coated with mud, their backs and buttocks and legs slippery against the island's surface.

After a while, when they were not so exhausted, they wiped off the mud. Brydon tore the tail from his shirt, used that, first on his face. Just then he would have given anything, except a day of his life, for a shower. The mud couldn't be completely wiped away. It didn't show as much on Spider's skin, but he felt it as much, the dirtiness of it. Spider wiped himself off with his socks and a nearly clean handkerchief. Brydon eventually had to use his entire shirt. They waited until the remaining thin coat of mud dried. Then they slapped and rubbed their skin and shook their hair, causing a dusty cloud around them. When they put on their clothes, they felt an all-over uncomfortable grittiness.

Peter and the others cleaned most of the mud from the items that had been salvaged:

2 bottles clam juice

1 can white hulless popcorn

1 bottle Tabasco sauce

1 can vanilla frosting

1 staple gun

1 container plastic toothpicks

2 yellow twelve-inch candles

24 beef bouillon cubes

1 can Irish oatmeal

1 self-applicating shoe polish

1 container flavored bread crumbs

1 can olive oil

1 can frozen lemonade concentrate

1 half-gallon can liquid floor wax

1 gardening claw

1 box wild rice

1 box No-Doz keep-awake tablets

4 cans evaporated milk

2 boxes plastic trash bags

1 container dog food

5 cans 7Up

2 bottles Coca-Cola

9 cans diet soda, cherry, club and creme

Also the oven cleaner, the puréed chestnuts

and the squeeze margarine.

Brydon examined the lot. The dog food appeared to be the most appetizing thing. Of course, the milk, the oatmeal, the frosting and such would do in a hunger pinch — and the soft drinks were good — but he had hoped to do better. Somewhere on the bottom there were thousands of better things to eat. Considering the abundance, it seemed ironic, almost vengeful: toothpicks, trash bags, a gardening claw — and what the hell could be done with a staple gun?

Brydon tossed a can of the milk to Peter, who jabbed it with the beer opener and gave it to Amy.

“Anybody for clam juice?” Brydon asked.

No takers.

He wondered if the time would come when there would be.

He rationed the soft drinks, one for every two persons.

Phil Kemp griped about that. Brydon told him if he was so thirsty he could dive for more. Kemp called Brydon a shithead, but he mumbled it low so Brydon didn't hear.

“I'd like some of that,” Lois said, indicating the vanilla frosting.

Too sweet for an empty stomach, Brydon thought, but he opened it for her. She took it to Island Five. While she sat gazing at nothing she frequently dipped her fingers into the frosting, childlike.

Back on Island Eight, Brydon lighted one of the candles. Less light than the flashlight but enough. He realized then, as he put the book of matches back in his pocket, that someone had taken the caviar. Both jars. While he was risking his life in the mud, someone had rifled his jacket pocket. What especially bothered Brydon was when the caviar was stolen — when. Anyone could have had it for the asking. Who had taken it? Brydon thought Kemp. That was why Kemp had such a big thirst, from gobbling salty caviar.

To put out some of his anger Brydon gulped on his half of a Coke, trying to pretend it was a Carta Blanca. Even before yesterday, before all this, he had begun to do a lot of pretending.

Marsha Hilbert and Elliot Janick.

“You're acting creepy,” said Marsha.

“I'm not.”

“Creepy,” she said.

“I'm sorry.”

The only time she'd heard the word “sorry” from him was when a rival didn't have bad luck.

“I don't like it,” she said.

He looked directly at her, and then, as though submitting to the power of her gaze, he looked away.

His eyes appeared watery, she thought. Perhaps because he hadn't slept.

“I wonder what happened to Ted,” he said. His concern for his chauffeur was also a first.

“Probably home in Beverly Hills ordering from Jurgensen's and wearing your silk shirts.”

“I doubt that.”

“Oh? Once I came back unannounced from Palm Springs and found him taking a bath in your big marble tub.”

It wasn't true.

“With a glass of cognac and one of your genuine Havanas.”

Elliot didn't seem to hear.

Marsha exaggerated a disgusted sigh. That alone would have ordinarily been enough to get to him.

They were seated on Island Two; nearest to them was Lois Stevens on Five.

“Do me a favor?” Elliot asked.

“What?”

“Hold me.”

“You're kidding.”

“Hold me.”

She reached for his crotch.

He knocked her hand away. “Not that!”

“I thought …”

“The mentality of a part-time hooker.”

“… you wanted to be held.” She felt suddenly confused, then better because he had reverted.

“I do,” he said softly.

He moved closer, leaned to her, led her arm over and around his shoulder to place his head on her breast.

She was uncomfortable.

After a while he said, “I've loved you, haven't I?”

“Sure.”

“I showed you how much I loved you, lots of times, didn't I?”

“Yeah.”

“It's a good thing to love.”

“My tit is going to sleep.”

He reduced his weight on her but held her hand so she couldn't take her arm from around him.

“If we get out of this I'll make some changes.”

“Why?”

“No more fighting it,” he said. “We'll buy a house in the south of France.”

“Cap Ferrat.”

“Far from it. A lazy little village and not too large a house, just room enough for us and once in a while a couple of friends.”

“Friends?”

“Real ones for a change. We'll make them.”

She was reminded that several of her friends had already been made by him. “You'd be bored shitless,” she said.

“I might even marry you. Wouldn't you want a peaceful life like that? To settle down?”

Settling down sounded to her like going to the bottom. Dreary thought. Especially for one at the top. She quickly slipped her hand free, took her arm away, separated from him.

Aloud to himself he said: “We're going to die.”

“No.”

“I know we will. I can feel it.”

“Speak for yourself.”

She tried a brief down-scale laugh, meant to sound mocking but it came out sort of nervous.

He disregarded it, as though he were alone or deaf.

That made her furious. He was doing it purposely, she thought. He knew her, knew how to get to her. What she would do was think of some way to retaliate, snap him out of it.

Someone was coming across the bridge.

Dan Mandel.

He apologized for intruding.

Elliot seemed to welcome having someone else to talk to. He even said please when he invited Dan to sit.

Dan and Elliot discussed the chances of being rescued. They went on about it, repeating the possibilities, which revealed how little they believed in them. Dan talked to Elliot but his eyes kept going to Marsha. He mentally pinched himself to confirm her presence.

Marsha recognized the symptom. She thought little of it but then it occurred to her that she might put it to use. She raised her knees, an easy, natural movement. The slick jersey fabric of her dress slid down her thighs. She was in profile to Dan, whose view now was a tantalizing arch of bare movie-star legs. Marsh tensed her ankles to exaggerate the line. Tossed her hair twice as though bothered by it, and her eyes wandered left, down, right onto Dan.

He didn't believe what her eyes were saying to him. He attributed it to his wishful thinking, and, to offset being obvious, asked, by way of a diversion, “Did you eat anything?”

“No appetite,” Elliot said.

“Have you ever had clam juice?” Marsha asked Dan.

“It's not bad,” he said.

“I'll bet you love it,” Marsha said.

Dan thought he knew what she meant. He grinned, a little embarassed, and told them, “I've got something you might go for.” From his pocket he took out two white-capped jars of caviar. Romanoff imported beluga, two ounces each.