DO NOT ENTER

I knew as soon as I stepped into the water that something wasn’t right. The icy tingle of the cold liquid began warming in my wet suit but the icy stone in my chest wasn’t going to warm up. I stopped in knee-deep water and rechecked my regulator. Everything was working. I had already checked it out thoroughly onshore but something nagged at my brain. Something I had forgotten.
“Everyone OK with the dive plan?” Dave, the leader of our group, looked directly at me. “Mitch?”
“No problems.” I gave him a hearty thumbs up that I didn’t really feel.
“Hey, Dave.” Lindsey’s soft voice came from behind me. She was checking her dive lights for the third time. “Humor me and go over it one more time.”
“Right. We are going into the cave for as far as we can go on this tank of air. We’ll check and repair the guide lines until we have 20 minutes of air left in our tanks then on my signal, we swim directly back out.” Dave has a reputation as good diver even if he does seem a little pompous at times. Comes from being an “old man” in the sport at twenty-six, I guess.
Dave waded away from us, adjusted his mask, fit his regulator into his mouth, and submerged. Lindsey and I followed him into the clear depths of Vortex Springs.
This is my first dive into this cave. I have been in others but these massive limestone caverns carved out by centuries of pulsing spring water are the largest and longest in the state. Vortex Springs has the reputation of being a killer cave. Some years ago, one of the preeminent cave divers had run out of air and time in this very cave. I tried to push these thoughts from my mind and concentrate on our mission.
The underwater mouth of the cave loomed before us. A plastic warning sign was screwed into the rock at the entrance. It had a skull and cross bones and the words
                   DO NOT ENTER
             CERTIFIED CAVE DIVERS ONLY

printed in red. We passed the sign and I touched it for luck. Somehow, I knew I was going to need it.
The current was stronger inside and I worked to keep my body aligned against the flow. Hard, controlled strokes from my flippers kept me stable. The last thing I wanted to do was allow the water to push me into the jagged limestone all around us.
Dave was moving well — his short muscular legs driving him forward. I was keeping up. I looked back over my shoulder at Lindsey. She had fallen a little behind but not too far yet.
The wide mouth of the cave began to narrow slightly. The current was even faster here and the walls felt closer than they actually were. Bubbles from our regulators drifted upwards to form pockets of exhaled gas along the ceiling. Realizing I was breathing too fast, I consciously slowed the rhythm of my inhalations and exhalations. It wouldn’t do to run out of air before we had even started.
Dave followed the plastic dive line affixed to the lowest part of the cave’s right wall. The gloom was increasing and I turned my main dive light on. The glow of the yellow light cast an illusion of warmth to the brown rock walls. Even with all three of our lights on, this cave would never be warm.
Dave stopped at the entrance to a smaller side cave. He indicated that this was where we needed to go to repair the guideline. He motioned that it was narrow then he began to remove his tank.
Oh, great. We get to wiggle through an opening just barely large enough for us to fit through, I thought as I unbuckled my tank with fingers gone stiffly uncooperative.  
Dave pushed his tank through ahead of him keeping the trailing regulator in his mouth. His squirming shape disappeared beyond the opening. I pushed my tanks in behind him hoping to hell he knew where he was going. The sides narrowed even further until I thought my shoulders were going to get wedged into the opening. Just as I was trying to decide how I could back out, my shoulders popped free and I was out. Lindsey followed behind me.
We were in an even larger cavern. Quickly I replaced my tank and turned on a second dive light. The cavern was so enormous that even all of our high-intensity lights didn’t penetrate the water to illuminate the walls.
Dave pointed downward and we all began an angled descent. I had been concentrating on listening to my breathing but in here, even that comforting sound was muffled. Astronauts must experience this same eerie feeling when they are in space – weightless dark silence.
After several minutes of swimming down, we entered another branch of the cave. Dave tied the end of the dive line to a metal bolt. This was the broken line we had come to repair. As he swam, more line unreeled and I followed to make sure it didn’t kink or break as he moved forward.
Dave’s flippers disturbed the mung on the floor of the passage and swirls of silt began to cloud where we had just been swimming through clear water. Silt out! More mung filled the water until I couldn’t see Dave in front or Lindsey behind. Stay together, that was the rule in a silt-out. Give it a few minutes, don’t disturb the bottom any more by thrashing about, and stay together. But Dave was gone and I had no idea if he was waiting a few feet away or had decided to try to swim out of the silt.
Something bumped my leg. Lindsey’s hand grasped my ankle and we hung motionless in the water to wait it out. The dive lights were useless. Shining them around in silt was like trying to drive with high beams on in fog.
We lay on the bottom for several minutes waiting. Lindsey began to tug on my leg, gently at first then with an increasing urgency. She wanted to back out and get into the large cavern away from the silt. I pulled my leg up slightly to let her know I was staying. Waiting for Dave.
She let go then but did tug once more at my flippers. Then she was gone. Dave was someplace ahead and Lindsey was moving away in the opposite direction. I was alone in the silt, blind even with lights on.
The last time I had checked our elapsed dive time, we had about 40 minutes of air to go. But how long had I been here now? More importantly, how much air did I have left? Stay together, I chanted like a mantra for several more minutes.
At last, the silt began to clear. I was in the cave alone. The dive line was flapping in the current obviously no longer connected to Dave’s reel. Dave was gone and he wasn’t coming back. I swam forward for a while but there wasn’t any sign he had been there. At a wider part of the corridor, I turned and headed back toward Lindsey.
She was waiting for me in the main cavern. Frantically, she pointed at her watch and then to the ceiling. Time to go up she was saying. I pointed in the direction I had last seen Dave. She shook her head violently.
Rescue. If we could get to the surface now, we could get fresh tanks and come back maybe before Dave ran out of air.
The uncomfortably narrow corridor was our only way out. We wasted precious minutes taking off our tanks and pushing them in front of us. This time, my shoulders wedged into the rocks and pinned my arms at my sides. I couldn’t go forward or back. I wanted to pound the limestone with my fists.
Relax, this isn’t helping, relax. On the second relax, I exhaled all the air from my lungs and was able to squeeze through. Tanks back on, we raced to the surface.
I broke through to the humid Florida air just as my tank ran out of air. The thought of Dave still down there made my chest feel like a block of ice was pressing on it. Lindsey and I fell on the sand gasping, gathering strength to yell for help.
Several people moved toward us from the dive shack.
“Dave… Dave is still down there…” Lindsey managed to tell the crowd.
“Bring me two tanks. I’m going back…” I sat up and struggled to get my empty tank off. “Hurry!”
“Why, Mitch, I didn’t know you cared,” Dave said.
Lindsey moaned and I got to my feet facing Dave. “What the hell?”
“There is an opening to the surface just beyond where we were trapped in the silt out.” He reached down and helped Lindsey to her feet. “I just swam up and out then I walked over. I figured you and Lindsey would have been out long before now.”     

    “Jesus Dave, you scared us to death, what’s wrong with you? You don’t just leave people behind in the mess you create.” I was getting angrier by the minute.  I took off my gear and let it fall to the ground.
“You almost made it impossible for us to find the way out, we could have been killed.” I moved toward Dave ready to hit him as hard as I could and I would have but Lindsey put her hand on my arm to stop me.
“We just won’t dive with him any more Mitch Ok, let’s go.” Lindsey spoke in a soft cool voice that took some of my anger away.  We walk away from Dave and Vortex Springs that day and we haven’t seen either one of them since.