THE FIGHT AT TWELVE FATHOMS
It was no use. I threw down my pen, tossed my unfinished letters on the
floor, and went out with murder in my heart. The mail was due in a day
or two, and I had neglected all my relations and friends for so long
that they must have had every reason for thinking me dead. But not a
word could I write.
There was a native singing on the beach below the hotel: the day was
hot and windless, and one could hear every sound. No one who has ever
lived in Papua will want to be told why I could not go on with my mail.
For the benefit of those who have not, I may explain that, of all
maddening sounds ever invented by the malice or ingenuity of man,
Papuan solo-singing is a long way the worst. The choral singing is
noisy and not very musical, but it lacks the brain-destroying texture
of the solo. An idle Papuan native (and a Papuan is always idle, unless
some one is making him work) seems able to pass away half a day, at
any time, chanting his own autobiography, and the history of his
immediate friends, in a long-drawn nasal howl that holds one note till
you feel the very substance of your brain giving way under its hideous
boring――and then takes a sudden gimlet twist.
At this point you get up, saying things that in all likelihood do no
credit to your education and upbringing, and throw the twelve-pound
clam-shell that probably ornaments the veranda, right at the furry head
of the singer. A clam-shell has a row of sharp points on its edge, and
it is extremely solid. As a rule, it penetrates far enough to convey
your wishes. If it does not, or if the singer takes it for an encore
and goes on again, you can generally find a tomahawk somewhere about
the house.
But on this occasion the singer was invisible, down on the beach, and
out of clam-shot, also out of boot, stove-lifter, jug, and tomahawk
shot. The only thing was to go and find him.... Down the stairs,
through the bar, and out across the glaring sandy street, where the
shadows of the palms were faint and feeble, in the cruel midday sun....
The scrap of bush that shaded the sea-beach concealed me as I stole
along. I meant to catch him at it.
“Yah-yah aaaaaaaaaaah-yah, yah-yah aaaaaah, yah-ah, yah-ah!” burst
forth another preliminary yell. I halted for a minute to locate the
sound. The singer took breath, and went on in a tone that bored through
one’s ears exactly as a dentist’s drill bores when it is coming down on
the nerve of a tooth. The words were distinguishable now, in spite of
the chanting manner. I caught a sentence as I drew near.
“Good Lord!” I said to myself, and straightened up, all idea of
vengeance disappearing from my mind like the foam on the Straits when
a southeaster flings it ashore. The man was singing in a dialect that
I knew――the usual bald recitative about various native affairs. But
there was something in this recitative that concerned me very nearly,
or I was much mistaken. I stood and listened. At first I could only
hear the word for “sorcerer” coming in again and again, mingled with
“Kata-Kata”――the name of the district where we had been first met with
the wonderful diamond that the Marquis and I were now pursuing. Then
the chanting became clearer:
“Aaaaa-yah, Mo is dead, Mo is dead and buried, and his spirit walks
about and bites men as they sleep. Aaaaaaah-yah!
“Aaaaa-yah, ah-yah, yah, Mo, the great sorcerer, did not take his
charm. Ah-yah, ah-yah, he took it before, and he did not die. Aaaaaa!
when he did not take it, he died.
“Aaah, aaaaah, ah-yah, the brother of Mo will not die: the brother of
Mo will take it. Aaaaah! Aaaah! Aaaah!”
The song, or chant, was repeated more than once while I listened.
Evidently the singer had been running it off like a phonograph for
some time. He was a Kiwai from the west and he used the Kiwai tongue,
which many white men understand, especially among the pearling crowd. I
wondered whether any one besides myself had heard him, and whether, if
any one had, the chant had conveyed any special meaning.
It did not seem likely. Most white men pay no more attention to native
singing than they pay to a howling dog. If the singing or the howling
annoys you, you throw something at the disturber of your peace: that is
all.
Further, if any one did hear it and take notice of it, there was
nothing dangerous in the song――unless one had the clue――the knowledge
of what the charm really was. Had any one the clue save myself and the
Marquis? Had George the Greek――who had dug Mo out of his grave, to get
his diving dress? Impossible. Still, I might as well stop the singing:
it was certainly irritating, and the Kiwai had no right to be annoying
the town in the middle of the day, almost opposite the hotel.
I went down on to the beach, and shouted to him to stop. He seemed to
understand English well enough, and he did stop, though with an amazed
and injured air. I noted that he was a boy I had not seen before;
probably a diver, though he did not seem to be on duty. He was loafing
on the sand, with a big, opened cocoanut beside him, and he looked
extremely comfortable and lazy.
“Why aren’t you out with the boats?” I asked. I did not question him
about his song: very few Papuans, no matter how well you may know them,
will tell you anything about their chants, and I was, as I say, a
stranger to this boy.
“Me sick,” he said, with a grin. I never saw a sturdier specimen of a
malingerer.
“You no sick, you too much fright,” I said.
“Yes, me fright,” he agreed. “All a time too much fright, long that
puri-puri man (sorcerer) he die. I no want I die finish all same. Me
sick, more better.”
“You rascal,” I said, “what boat do you belong to?”
“_Gertrude_,” he answered, turning the cocoanut up on his face, and
drinking loudly.
“Brother belong Mo, Kata-Kata boy, stop along _Gertrude_? Man he got
too much big ear?” I asked, making signs about my own ears.
“Yes, he stop.”
“He puri-puri man?”
“What-name that word? I no savvy,” said the savage, looking at me with
cunningly narrowed eyes.
I saw it was no use trying to pump him, so I left. As I came out into
the street I saw George the Greek in front of me, walking rather
aslant, as if he had just come up from the neighborhood of the beach
himself. He did not look behind, but walked quickly on, and disappeared
inside the ruins of his store. I thought there was nothing in it; yet,
somehow, I would rather not have seen him there.
I went back to the Marquis overjoyed with my discovery, but before
telling him I got him outside, and out of range of the hotel. In
Papua, if you see two men out in the open, talking confidentially
together, you may be sure that they are talking secrets. All Papua’s
important secrets are discussed under the sky. The iron house of New
Guinea, with its low partitions, and the projecting veranda roof that
acts as a natural sounding-board, is, I suppose, about the worst place
in the world for talking over private matters――apart from the fact
that a native who understands English, or a curious white man, may be
standing unseen under the floor at your very feet.
“This is good,” said the Marquis. “I can take heart again; I was
beginning to fear that we had lost that wonderful-wicked valuable.
Still, the shorn lamb must not halloo till it is out of the window.
What will we do?”
“Well, it seems so simple,” said I, “that I can hardly believe it. But
from what I see, all we have to do is to catch Mo’s brother when he
comes back tonight, get him in a quiet place, offer him a pound or two
for the stone, and take it right off. A nigger who’s been with the
Thursday Island fleet, even if it was some years ago, will know the
value of money.”
“What will you offer?” asked the Marquis.
“Curio price,” I said. “From ten shillings to a couple of pounds. If he
seems very much attached to it, spring five pounds more. One must be
careful not to give so much that the other white men would hear of it
and get thinking. Otherwise, I see no trouble.”
“It seems too good to be true,” said the Marquis thoughtfully.
Unfortunately, it was.
When the _Gertrude_ got in that evening, I was on the jetty looking out
for her. So was the Marquis; so was George the Greek. He never glanced
at either of us, and seemed to be quite absorbed in cutting up some
singularly villainous looking tobacco. But when the lugger had run
alongside the jetty, and the boys were coming off, he attached himself
to the bat-eared man, and followed him down the street. We followed
also, perplexed.
“Do you think he knows?” whispered the Marquis.
“He can’t,” I said. “I should guess that he thinks we’re trying to do
illicit pearl buying. The result’s the same, however. He’ll probably
stick to us.”
He did. He loafed along in the rear of the bat-eared man until the two
reached the temporary shed put up for the native divers to sleep in.
Then he sat down on the ground outside the shed, stuffed his pipe full
of the ugly tobacco, and coolly began to smoke.
“He’s prepared for all night,” I said. “Let’s leave him. He knows
nothing really, or he wouldn’t tag round after us like this. For two
pins I’d give him a hammering――”
We went and left him, still smoking.
I slept badly that night, on account of a touch of fever. In
consequence, I was late up next morning, and the Marquis, who was
always an early riser, was dressed and out-of-doors when I awoke. I was
just preparing to rise when he came into my room and sat down on the
bed, his pink face curiously pale.
“Flint, my Flint!” he said. “Give me a brandy. I am shook.”
I gave it to him, and asked what was the matter. He drank quickly, and
looked round the room before replying.
“It is too much, this,” he whispered.
“It’s not too much――I only gave you a couple of fingers,” I said.
“Not that――the bat man, I mean. Flint, God of my Gods, he is walking up
and down the main street on this minute, with the stone slung round his
neck, like a locket!”
“And nothing on it!” I exclaimed――if you can exclaim under your breath.
“There is but a small native case of weaved grass, and see you, he has
left the end that it almost shows out――one can see the entire shape of
it!”
“Why didn’t you buy it right there!” I demanded, jumping out of bed,
and beginning to fling on my clothes with all possible haste.
A New Guinea native walking down the main street of Samarai, in broad
day, with the second largest diamond of modern times slung round his
neck! It was indeed a nice situation.
“My Flint, it was impossible. The Greek, he was looking out of his
window all the time.”
“Oh, hang the Greek! It’s better the news of the stone should get
out――once we’ve got it――than that it should be knocking loose round
Samarai like that,” I declared. “It’s true that if we let the folks
here get wind of it, we shall have to sleep on it in turns, and keep
sort of watch and watch all the time till the boat comes, and after
that the real fun will only be beginning. But anything’s better than
losing it. Why, that confounded Greek may suspect already what we are
after. Come on.” I counted out a handful of sovereigns, put them in my
pocket, and started off.
The bat-eared man was nowhere to be seen.
“He’s gone to breakfast before they start,” I said, turning back toward
the native quarters. Just as plainly as if he were before my eyes, I
could see the little Papuan, with his woolly head and cramped, crooked
figure, striding along with the price of a kingdom a-swing about
his greasy neck, in a rude locket of grass――the treasure that would
assuredly glitter in the crown of a queen, or shine upon the turban of
some rich Indian rajah, within a few brief months.
For, whether the Marquis and I secured it or whether we did not, the
destiny of the Sorcerer’s Stone was fixed by this time. It had passed
too near civilization to escape. Its track of blood and terror――the
track of every great diamond――was opening out before it. What had the
Marquis said in Kata-Kata――“First blood for the diamond: I wonder who
shall be the next?”
The next had been the sorcerer himself. And the next after that?...
The man was not in the quarters; none of the boys was there. The
remains of their meal were scattered about the ground. It seemed that
for some reason or other the boats were going early today.
“The jetty, and look sharp!” I said.
We looked as sharp as we could, but the _Gertrude_ was off before we
got half-way down the street. Others of the fleet preceded her; one
remained behind.
“Come on, Marky,” I said. “We’ll go with the fleet today. We’re curious
to see the pearling, you know.”
“I have seen it many confounded times in other countries, and I am
quite fatigued of it,” declared the Marquis. “Always one gets some ugly
shells, and one does not find no pearls, and they tell one foolish
stories, and there is gin, and one goes home.”
“Well, you’re going to see it some more,” I said.
The captain of the _Dawn_ was willing to take us out for a
consideration. He was a long time getting away from the jetty, and I
grew more impatient every minute, for there was the _Gertrude_ far
ahead, and gradually drawing out of sight, while we still delayed. By
the time the _Dawn_ had spread her dirty sails to the breeze, the other
lugger had diminished to a speck.
The Marquis and I sat side by side on the hatch, watching Sariba and
the Basilisk open out into emerald and purple bays, and the tall blue
D’Entrecasteaux show up on the far horizon. We did not talk: we were
too anxious.
We cast anchor in a wide plain of blue water, with the _Gertrude_ not
very far away. She was anchored also, and I saw by the ladder and the
trailing air-tube that her diver was down. Looking closer, a second
air-tube appeared.
“Why, she has two down,” I said.
“She got a new diver this morning,” remarked the captain of the _Dawn_.
“George the Greek. He’s broke, and has to work. I wish I’d got him
myself: he’s a rare fine diver.”
The Marquis and I looked at each other, and there was uneasiness in
our faces. The _Dawn_ rolled steadily on a long, windless swell like
watered silk; the sappy, luscious green of the island forests rose up
beyond the sea; in the near foreground, the _Gertrude_, with stern
pointed toward us, showed two gray spider-threads dropping down into
the water. At the ends of those two threads, far down among the coral
and the sponges and the beds of weed and shell, crept all along at the
bottom of the sea two men, one with the ransom of a king hung round his
neck, the other....
What was the other doing?
I did not mean to be very long finding out.
“Run us up as close to the _Gertrude_ as you can, without interfering,”
I said.
The captain worked a little nearer. “That’s about as far as I can go,”
he said. “And now I’m going to send my diver down. You and his lordship
can see everything beautiful. It’s not too deep here――since that Mo got
finished off with diver’s paralysis the other day, we’ve shifted to
shallower water; this isn’t more than twelve fathom.”
“Your diver isn’t going down just yet,” I said, bending down to unlace
my boots. “I’m going. I want to have a look at things.”
“It’s a loss to me,” said the captain sourly. “Are you prepared to make
it good?”
“Certainly,” declared the Marquis, who seemed to understand the state
of affairs. “We will pay you what is the value of the shell that your
diver should bring up.”
“And what about the pearls?” demanded the captain.
“Oh, come off it!” I said. “How many pearls has the whole fleet got
since it went to work here?”
“Uncommon few, and bad at that,” admitted the captain gloomily. “And
what there is, no doubt the Malays and Japs poach for the most part.”
“Had any stealing?” I asked. I was getting myself into the diver’s
heavy suit of woolen underwear now as quickly as I could.
“You’ve been down before, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” (I did not think it necessary to say that my experiences had
been confined to a single trip, made in shallow water, for two or three
minutes, over at Thursday, and that I had not liked it a little bit.)
“About that stealing, now?”
“Well, I reckon the Greek has some idea of the kind, by the way he was
keepin’ round after that Papuan diver, followin’ him along the street,
and watchin’ him like a cat watches a mouse.”
“And do you think the Papuan has been stealing?” I had got into the
woolens now, and the tender, a Malay, came forward to help me into the
dress itself.
“Naw! Papuans aren’t no pearl-stealers. They’ll steal food, or clothes,
or tools, but pearls――they haven’t no use for them, and they’re not
sharp enough to smuggle and sell them.”
I had learned almost as much as I wanted now. The rest, though I did
not hear it from Joe Gilbert till later, I will tell here. The Greek
had “shadowed” the Papuan down to the boat, on which both were engaged.
He had got close to him during the run out, and tried to examine the
curio-bag that the Papuan carried round his neck. Most of the natives
disliked and distrusted the Greek, and Mo’s brother was not likely to
feel any kindness toward the white man who had dug up and maltreated
the body of his only relative. He drew away and refused to let the
Greek put a finger on his bag.
The Greek pretended that he had been only jesting, and let him alone
till they arrived over the pearling grounds. Then the two descended
together, from opposite sides of the vessel. When we came up they had
been alone in the depths of the sea for over an hour.
Our captain noted the length of time the divers had been under, and
talked self-righteously about the carelessness of “Good Joe Gilbert.”
“He had them down long before we was in sight,” said our skipper.
“Bring along that corselet, Tanjong. Give me a wrench. I see to things
myself on my ship, I do.” (He began screwing me into my dress by means
of the wrench, talking all the time.) “And look at them tenders of
Gilbert’s――pre-tenders, I call them. Are they watching the air-tubes
proper, or are they not?”
I really did not know enough to say.
The captain went on: “Now I’ll tend you myself, and you’ll be as safe
as if you was in the hotel in Samarai, drinkin’ a long beer. You know
the signals?”
“I know one pull on the signal-line is ‘pull me up,’ and I know how to
work the taps in the helmet. I reckon that’s enough.” They were putting
on my lead-soled boots now and hanging a huge locket of lead round my
neck. I can not express how I hated the idea of going down.
And the Marquis, sitting on the hatch, his large pink face standing
out like a harvest moon against the heaving sea, was whistling――of all
tunes on earth――the Dead March in “Saul.” By this, I guessed that his
thoughts were somber.
“Marky,” I said, “if you could choose some other tune I’d be obliged to
you.”
“It was not on the cause of you that I whistled it,” he replied
gloomily. “It is on the cause of myself, who can not make this
journey, because I am too large that any diver dress can take me in.”
“Well, one of us has got to go,” I said, knotting the life-line round
my waist. The captain had moved off to inspect the working of the pump.
“And of a truth!” cried the Marquis, “the pitcher that goes to the well
is soonest mended!”
Tanjong now came with the front glass to screw up my helmet. I looked
round at the _Gertrude_ once more. Still the two spider threads dangled
down her counter, across the littered, dangerous deck, with its
careless tenders and the empty, heaving swell of the silent sea.
“They’ve been down too long――every one must be asleep on that mud-scow
of Gilbert’s,” growled the captain. “Maybe something’s got them. I near
forgot to tell you: you keep your eyes skinned for clams, down below
there.”
“Clams?”
“Yes――you don’t need to worry about sharks: we haven’t seen one, not
for days; and as for diamond-fish, if they come along and get a hold
of your air-tube, it’s no use you or any one worryin’. But them clams,
they are dangerous. There’s some proper big ones, and if you put your
foot in one――――-”
“I can guess,” I said; for I knew something of the terrible giant
tridacna of these southern seas. “I’m ready: screw up.”
The Marquis had of course waited for this moment to make a speech――when
I could not possibly hear him, being shut into my metal shell like a
lobster into its carapace――and he rushed forward to seize and press my
hand, as I stepped over the side of the lugger to the ladder below. He
spoke eloquently and I judged imprudently; and tears rose in his eyes.
I cut short the scene by sliding my feet off the ladder and letting
myself go.
I feared the effect of such a depth as seventy feet of water on an
inexperienced diver like myself; but I need not have been uneasy.
The skipper of the _Dawn_ was not minded to have an accident, and
he let me down very slowly. I saw the green water, full of silver
air-bubbles, rushing up and past the window of my helmet, for what
seemed quite a long while――though it could not have been more than a
minute or two before my lead-soled boots came down as lightly as a
dancer’s sandal on the crumbling coral at the bottom.
This was the real thing, and not like my amateur experiment at
Thursday: I began to feel interested and to forget the shrinking fear
that all new divers experience in leaving the light and life of the
world above and trusting themselves, cased in benumbing metal and
rubber, to the choking depths of the sea. My ears were very painful,
and my lungs worked badly; my arms and legs seemed to move with a
deliberation of their own, and the curious change in the conditions of
gravity made me feel like a large cork doll.
But I could make my way about, and it was almost as light as on the
surface. I could see the tiny blue and emerald and violet buds on the
coral, and the eyes of the painted parrot-fish, and every blade and
frond of the tall green seaweeds that waved about as I moved by. The
whole scene was so wonderfully beautiful that I almost forgot the grim
errand that had brought me down into the midst of it.
Coral beds, when you see them from the surface on a calm day, are
like a garden of flowers below the water. Seen from beneath the ocean
itself, they take on the hues of actual jewels: the huge fans and
mushrooms and ferns of the reef glow with lights of emerald, sapphire,
and amethyst; the sun that falls through the water makes magical fires
of gold and green. Fish come gently past the windows of your helmet,
hurrying not at all, and look in with their cold eyes as they go by;
their bodies shine with all the colors of a painted butterfly, and they
make broken little rainbows in the water as they move.
You are walking on the coral: it crumbles away like over-baked biscuits
under your boots and keeps you slipping and staggering, and you must
keep a sharp lookout over those ugly indigo-colored gulfs that open in
its surface here and there, for coral reefs shelter many a dangerous
guest.
All this I saw, treading with the long, soft pace of the diver at the
bottom of the sea, breathing short with the weight of the seventy feet
above me, and trying not to think about the invisible nails that kept
boring into my ears. I had taken my bearings when I dropped down from
the lugger, and I could see her now far above me, like a shadowy whale
basking on the surface. A good way ahead I could dimly discern another
shadow――that of the _Gertrude_. So far, not a sign of her divers.
I trod on, balancing with my hands like an acrobat as I passed the
edges of deep crevasses in the coral, and watching carefully for
the serrated double edge that marks the presence of the formidable
_Tridacna gigas_――the huge shell that most people have seen in museums,
from three to six or seven feet long, and as heavy as the great stone
basin of a fountain in a park. Small ones I saw everywhere; bigger
ones, a foot or two in length, now and then. But none of the giants
was to be seen.
I must have been down fully ten minutes and was beginning to feel
the effects of my submersion, in a certain giddiness of the head and
numbness of the limbs, when I saw something a good way in front of me
that was not rock, nor coral, nor fish. What it was I could not tell,
for it was in rapid motion and agitated the water so much that one
could only see something waving and bending about. I took a good grip
of my ax and went on faster. Be it what it might, I had got to have a
look at it.
The water seemed to clear as I drew nearer, and then I began to run――as
one runs at the bottom of the sea, sprawling and waving and half
swimming, working arms and legs together. For now I saw. There were two
divers a little way ahead, attached spiderwise to their ship by long
threads of life-line and air-tube, and they were fighting. I floundered
up close to them and they never saw me; hear me they could not, for
we were all isolated in our metal shells one from the other.
[Illustration:
_It was awful to see them struggling and reeling and gripping at
each other, there at the bottom of the sea, where a tangled
life-line or a nipped air-tube meant certain death_]
It was awful to see them struggling and reeling and gripping at each
other――there at the bottom of the sea, where a tangled life-line or a
nipped air-tube meant certain death. The silence――the muffled, stifled
silence of the deep――made the horror more horrible yet. It was like a
struggle of lost souls among the shades.
I made my way as close as I dared, keeping my life-line and air-tube
well out of the way, and snatched at the arm of the nearest diver. But
in the unfamiliar medium of the water I missed; and the fight went on,
the two dark monsters, with their round metal heads and hideous huge
glass eyes, dodging, slipping, striking.... I saw now, with a thrill
of horror, that both were using their knives, or trying to. They had
an immense advantage over me, in being accustomed to the water; they
moved easily where I could hardly stir for fear of losing my balance.
Something, however, had to be done. I flung myself forward anyhow, and
made another snatch at the reeling figures. Crunch went the coral
under my feet, and I went down right into the black crevasse.
I caught my signal-line, and hauled as I fell. They were doing their
duty upon the _Dawn_: my tender answered with a sturdy haul that sent
me swinging toward the surface again. I signaled “Lower,” and they let
me down. But the swing had carried me a little way from the scene of
the fight.
With a horrible fear thumping at my heart, I flapped and stumbled
forward through the wavering green.... I was too late.
The biggest diver had got one home at last. As I came up he sheathed
his knife in the dress of the other and ripped it up; out came a
fearful rush of silvery air, and the wretched creature, drowning,
kicked and struggled, and snatched wildly at its signal-line, which I
now saw had been cut.
The other man drove his hand into the gap in the dress, tore out a
small brown object dangling on a string, and jumped backward out of
the way of his grasping, struggling victim. In the jump he fell, and
instantly the water vibrated to an iron clang that struck my helmet
like a shot. He was caught in something; he fought terribly to be
loose; from his imprisoned arm spread out a sudden cloud of brilliant
red.
“Sharks! Blood brings sharks!” was the thought that beat upon my brain,
as I flapped forward to give him help. Dulled as my senses were by the
pressure of the sea, what I saw nearly drove me out of my mind with
horror. A tridacna had got him.
It was set in a hole of the coral, its two fearful zigzag edges lying
almost even with the surrounding level. It had been gaping open until
the diver fell back upon it, and the clang that had struck upon my
helmet was the sound of its ponderous shells, each some quarter ton
in weight, slamming shut. The arm of the diver had been snapped and
crushed between the edges: even as I looked, he fell back, the last
rag of flesh tearing away. The tridacna had nipped off the limb like a
carrot.
By this time I was so dazed and giddy with my submersion that I
scarcely knew what I was about, and the horror of the two deaths
before my eyes did not overcome me as it might have done had I been
able to feel anything clearly. I knew the small man must be drowned: I
guessed that the other was beyond help. I caught at the bigger man’s
signal-line, knotted it together, and tugged furiously. Up on the
_Gertrude_ they felt it and began to haul. The two black monsters, with
their gleaming eyes, went slowly up toward the shadow of the boat,
dangling loose and limp as they rose.
“Sharks!” my mind kept saying to me. I looked fearfully round and
round. The green wavering water was clear of all large shadows: no
living torpedo, snout down, darted between me and the daylight. At my
feet the serrated jaws of the terrible clam jutted slightly up from the
coral cleft in which it lay; they were closed like a vise, and an end
of shattered bone protruded from the middle.
I have always wondered that I was able to think as quickly and as
clearly as I did, there at the bottom of the sea, with my mind dazed
by unaccustomed pressure and shaken by the horrible tragedy that had
just passed before my eyes. But I was quite certain of what I had to
do. It was the Greek’s right arm that had been severed. The diamond,
in its casing of grass, was in his hand as he fell. A thousand to one
that diamond was inside the tridacna. I had got to get it out, and
quickly――for two reasons――first, I could not stay down much longer,
and secondly, nothing but a miracle could have kept the sharks away so
long, with the smell of blood in the water.
The tridacna had been open when I came up. It would probably open
again, as the morsel it had caught was scarcely in accordance with its
ordinary food. When it opened, I must be ready with my ax, and strike
as deep as possible into the yielding flesh, in the hope of hitting the
great muscle that controlled the swinging of the valves. Should I miss
that, I stood to lose the diamond, the ax, and not impossibly myself,
for those giant shells as they closed might grab me as they had the
Greek.
Well, I must hope not to miss. I poised the ax, and waited.
It must have been several minutes before any movement took place in the
tridacna, but at last I saw the least possible gaping between the rows
of tight-clinched scallops. The shells moved apart, slowly, slowly.
Something gleamed between their separating edges――something that shot
out rays of blue and green.
Was it the diamond? No! It was the tridacna itself.
Much as I had heard of these creatures, I had never heard anything of
their beauty, and when I first saw it, it almost stunned me. From out
the gates of those gigantic shells, as they opened more and more, came
pouring forth the “mantle” of the fish, rising high above the marble
edges of the shell, and trembling away in a cloud of glory several
feet beyond. All the colors of a peacock flaunting in the sun were
there: purples, violets, gold and green and blue, and, over all, the
iridescent haze of the water, breaking into crumbled rainbows upon this
miracle of unknown, unseen beauty.
I fairly gasped, it was so wonderful. Then, remembering myself, I bent
as near the shell as I dared and looked for the ghastly relic it had
seized. There was nothing to be seen but the gorgeous mantle itself.
The murderous hand and its booty had alike disappeared.
I waited for a moment to collect myself, felt the blade of the ax to
see that it was keen, poised it, and swung.
“Now or never!” I thought. And, as the blade went home, I leaped back,
and stiffened myself for the shock of the great valves slamming down on
the handle.
It did not come.
I tried to draw the ax out and could not. The tridacna, in its dying
agony, had gripped its muscles round the blade. But the closing-muscle
was severed: the valves could not shut. Or at least I thought so. I
drew my diver’s knife and took the risk of putting my hand inside the
shells, slashing away at the huge mass of meat inside. By degrees the
mechanical grip on the ax-blade lessened and I pulled it out.
Now it was possible to empty the clam, and I began tearing the meat
away in lumps as big as butchers’ joints, and flinging it down on the
coral. The whiteness of the inner shell, pure as polished marble, began
to shine through. I had thrown away the greater part of the contents
when I came at last on what I sought.
There it was, the little brown parcel, lying loose beside the greedy
hand that had clutched at it and at death together. It seemed to me,
as I took the Sorcerer’s Stone and put it in the bag round my neck, as
if a wave of cold passed through me that had nothing to do with the
benumbing water in which I stood. The evil thing!――the thing that had
caused death before, that would assuredly cause it again. There, at the
bottom of the sea, it would have been safe: the trail of blood that
marks the path of every great diamond would have been washed away in
the safe, the secret waves, to begin never more again. And I was taking
it back.
I declare I stood with the stone in my hand and thought――I do not know
what I thought: something mad, if madness it be to think as other men
do not. Whether I should have gone beyond thinking or not I can not
say. I did not get the chance. For, just as I had taken the diamond
out of my bag, something happened that made me drop it back again
in frantic haste and tug at my signal-cord as hard as I could. Not
hurriedly, but quietly, softly, and almost gracefully, a large, long,
deep-blue form came gliding through the water, and, with a sweep of its
scythe-shaped tail, made straight for me.
I believe now that it was going simply for the remains of the tridacna
and was not troubling about me at all: I could not have smelt so
attractive, cased up in metal and rubber, as did the raw scattered
flesh. But nobody waits to try conclusions with a shark in its own
element. I went up through the water as fast as the captain of the
_Dawn_ could drag me, alarmed, as he was, at my long stay, and I felt
that shark at my toes every inch of the seventy feet.
Nothing touched me, however. The hull of the _Dawn_ appeared above my
head――a welcome sight, indeed; the ladder flashed before my eyes, and
then two pairs of hands were pulling me over the bulwarks and screwing
away at the glasses on my helmet. I am not of the fainting kind, but I
will admit I had to sit down while they were doing it, and was not very
clear as to my whereabouts for a moment or two after.
Then, when they had got the helmet off, and my lungs were full of the
good, fresh air――the glorious air of free heaven itself――I saw that the
Marquis was kneeling on the deck beside me to get his head on a level
with mine, and gazing so anxiously into my face that I could not help
bursting out into laughter.
“Grace to God, you are well!” said the Marquis, his face lighting up
like sunshine after rain. “You signaled ‘all right’ when we pulled,
but, my friend, we was near bringing you up at force! Did we not see
that the two divers of the _Gertrude_ had come up sick?”
“Sick!” I yelled. “Dead!”
“Dead!” cried the Marquis and the captain together.
“Why!” the captain declared, “that _Gertrude_, she up sailed and off
with her before they was well on board.”
So she had; there was no vestige of her to be seen. It appeared
afterward that Good Joe Gilbert had completely lost his head at the
sight of his two divers, one obviously murdered, the other dead and
mutilated, and had started off as hard as he could for the magistrate
and the police on Samarai. This job was too much for him to handle, he
said, and he didn’t want to get his head into no murdering rows and
have the Government jumping on a harmless man that only wanted to do
well by every one.
It was to his panic haste that I owed my freedom to carry out my own
plans, there at the bottom of the sea. Had the Marquis or the captain
realized that Gilbert’s divers were dead they would have pulled me up
at once. But divers’ paralysis had been common in the fleet, and they
took the disturbance on the _Gertrude_ to mean nothing worse, as her
flag, in the confusion, had not been half-masted.
The Marquis and I discussed afterward whether the Greek could have
known or not that Mo’s brother had a diamond on his ugly little person.
I inclined to think that he did not. In a pearling fleet the minds
of men run exclusively on pearls, and nobody, so far as I knew, had
said anything about diamonds at any time. The acute little Greek had
somehow sensed the existence of a small and precious valuable in which
we were interested; he had shadowed the Papuan to try and find out what
he could, and, being baffled, had taken service on the _Gertrude_ for
the sole purpose (or so I judged) of following Mo’s brother beneath
the water and robbing him, there where no man was likely to see or
interfere.
I do not think it ever entered his head that a stranger, not a diver by
profession, would risk the descent in twelve fathoms of dangerous water
merely on the chance of seeing what he was up to. But then, he did not
know the stake.
Or so I thought. The Marquis had his own opinion.
He had his own opinion about the diamond, too. That night we ventured,
very cautiously, to take it out and examine it in a quiet corner. He
handled its beauty――our own at last――with a touch that was almost
reluctant.
“Flint, now that it is to us, I do not feel as I have felt about it
before,” he said. “I hope these misfortunes are at an end.”
“Well, you wanted it badly enough; you should be glad now we have it,”
I said.
“Distant fields are always green,” quoted the Marquis gravely; and I
was so amazed to hear him quote a proverb right side up for once that
I almost dropped the diamond on the floor.
V
THE
SECRET OF THE STONE
OVEN COUNTRY