11 Diving Adventure

by Willard Price

  The shark came on with amazing speed, maintaining its reputation as the fastest of all fish. In short bursts it could do fifty miles an hour.

  The shark was not only the fastest and largest of fish, but the most dangerous. In that flashing moment Hal remembered what they had been told by one of the leading-surgeons in Sydney. He had treated hundreds of cases of shark bite.

  It is possible,’ Dr Coppleson had said, ‘that sharks in some other parts of the world are harmless, but in our waters they are certainly not. Here is a collection of over a hundred reports concerning men who have been attacked by sharks. As you can see, eighty per cent of these cases were fatal. We have here in Australia five sorts of sharks that attack men: white sharks, tiger sharks, hammerheads, grey nurse sharks, and makos. As Australians, we are ashamed to have to say that Australia leads the world in shark attacks and deaths.’

  The boys would never forget the tiger’s eyes as they looked at that moment. They were blacker than onyx,

  Powerful, calm, and cruel. No wonder that the English sea captain who in the sixteenth century had first placed one of these monsters on display in London named it from the German word Schurke, meaning villain. Schurke became shark. It was still the villain of the sea.

  The boys were astounded by the gape of those open jaws. Now they understood the Australian report that a great white had been cut open and the remains of a whole horse found inside. This was possible only because of the elastic muscles between the upper and lower jaws - they stretch like rubber bands so that the villain can take in food larger than its own head.

  Before their eyes, they saw this happen. The cavern with its seven hundred and twenty teeth took in Mr Bottle’s head and shoulders before he could get out a single whistle or click and proceeded to swallow him whole.

  It was more than Roger could bear. Mr Bottle had saved him, now he must save Mr Bottle. Forgetting his own danger, deaf to the shout of warning from his brother, he plunged out of the glass jeep and made straight for the villain of the sea.

  He had no idea yet what he would do. He had a knife in his belt, but he had sense enough to realize that he might as well attack this monster with a tooth pick. He wished he had a spear gun - but that too would probably have been useless. He had no weapons but bis bare hands.

  He would try the dolphin’s favourite trick. He swam beneath the shark, then came up with all the speed he could muster and rammed his hard head into the villain’s tummy. The flesh went in like rubber but bounced out again like rubber. The shark didn’t seem to mind in the least.

  How about the gills? They were supposed to be very sensitive. Roger swam to the right gill and beat upon it with all the force of his fists.

  The shark did not seem to feel it. It was too fully occupied in getting down its four-hundred pound mouthful of food. This was a slow process, but very steady, and another inch of Roger’s friend had now disappeared.

  Roger could at least be glad that the shark had not bitten Mr Bottle in two. There was no need to bite it if it could be swallowed whole. If the shark changed its mind and closed its teeth that would be the end of Roger’s dolphin. He must act fast, but what could he do?

  He remembered that no fish liked to have anything on its back, whether it was octopus, giant squid, conger eel or sea snake. Or man.

  He swam up and came down straddling the back just behind the head.

  This bothered him much more than it bothered the shark. Roger was not protected by a rubber suit but wore only swimming trunks since these tropical waters were very warm. The teeth that covered the tiger’s back pierced his legs. Trickles of blood began to turn the water pink.

  The tiger switched violently. It had caught the smell of blood and that made it all the more determined to get this meal down as quickly as possible.

  Through the pink mist Roger saw Hal coming to the rescue. Roger wanted to win this battle all by himself. What could his brother do? Nothing more than he could.

  There was one thing he had not tried. He had battered the belly and punched the gill and tried to distract the creature by straddling its back.

  But those great black eyes. They were more tender than stomach, gills or back. Roger leaned forward and sank his thumbs into the two black pools.

  The shark took notice of him for the first time. It thrashed about violently, churning up the water, frightening away the reef fish. It took to swimming around in a circle, its tail beating violently while the tortured dolphin’s tail beat as violently in front. Here was something new in natural history - a monster with a tail at each end.

  Roger was nearly unhorsed by the frenzied creature’s leaps and surges. He must not lose his grip and fall off. He pressed his bare legs more tightly against the cruel teeth, regardless of the pain, and dug his thumbs deeper into the eyes. His mount was now circling at such speed that Hal was left hopelessly behind.

  Roger could see that his strategy was having some effect. The shark was loosening its hold on the dolphin. Roger had spoiled its appetite. Now it could only think of escaping those cruel thumbs.

  Mr Bottle evidently thought that at last there was some hope of escape, and wriggled vigorously. The teeth no longer held him, but still he could not pull loose. The muscles of the great fish’s throat held him fast. How could Roger help free him from those great rubbery pincers that gripped his head?

  The boy decided it was time for the last act He leaned forward with the idea of helping the dolphin to prise himself loose, but could not reach him. He saw that he did not need to put his thumbs back into the shark’s eyes; the pain he had already inflicted was enough. Enough to make the shark forget its meal, but not enough to rescue the dolphin.

  If he could only get hold of the dolphin’s tail and pull him free. Suddenly it occurred to him - there was a way to do that.

  He slid off the shark’s back, scraping himself more badly in the process. He turned about and got ready to meet the shark as it came round again. He saw that Hal had done the same thing. Between them they might be able to lay hold of that squirming black tail that projected from the shark’s mouth like the tongue of a great snake.

  Here it came, the weird double animal. The shark’s bleary eyes did not see the two obstacles that lay ahead until within a dozen feet of them. One obstacle was big and the other only half its size. With a strong thrust of its tail the shark avoided the big thing and came within reach of the smaller one.

  Roger grabbed the waving tail of the dolphin.

  It was then that the shark made a serious mistake. It wrenched to one side to avoid the strange object that it dimly saw blocking its path. Thus it did what Roger could not have done by himself. With Roger holding firmly to the tail, the sidelong twist was enough to jerk the dolphin loose from the grip of those powerful throat muscles.

  Out came Mr Bottle, so dazed by his experience that he lay without movement like a dead thing. For a moment Roger feared that he really was dead. Trapped in the shark’s throat, he had been unable to get to the surface to breathe. Perhaps he had suffocated.

  Roger must get that blowhole into the air at once. The air mixture inside the glass jeep would do. Hal came to help. One on each side, locking their arms around their helpless friend, they propelled him towards the jeep. The effort to move this inert dead weight of four hundred

  pounds made them breathe heavily from their scuba tanks, but at last they crawled up into the jeep and drew the animal’s head above water.

  Hal put his hand close to the blowhole. His face became very grave.

  ‘Well,’ said Roger anxiously, ‘is he breathing or not?’

  ‘He is not,’ Hal said. ‘I’ll try artificial respiration.’

  But how do you practise mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with a dolphin? In this case it must be mouth-to-blowhole.

  Hal placed his mouth over the blowhole and exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, inhaled.

  He kept this up until he was blue in the face. It takes a lot of air to fill and empty the lungs of a dolphin.

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sp; Roger pushed him aside and took his place.

  Hal put his ear to the dolphin’s chest. ‘His heart is still beating. Keep it up - I think he’ll come round.’

  Roger kept it up until he was completely winded.

  He stopped to rest, while keeping his face close to the blowhole. He felt a breeze fanning his cheek. It came and went. He suddenly realized it was no breeze.

  ‘He’s breathing!’ he exclaimed.

  The dolphin’s soft brown eyes were fixed upon him. A weak smile curved the animal’s lips. Mr Bottle seemed to know to whom he owed his new lease of life. He clicked a little. It was a very faint click, more like the chirp of a small bird.

  Roger and Hal still supported him. Roger stroked his neck. The animal’s strength rapidly came back. Soon he was whistling and clicking like mad, saying a hundred thank-yous in his own two languages.

  He began to struggle a little, and the boys let him go. He dropped out of the hatch and swam happily about.

  A voice came over the radiotelephone. ‘Captain Murphy calling Hal Hunt.’

  Hal replied, ‘This is Hunt. Where are you, captain?’

  ‘Over your head,’ replied the captain.

  ‘It must be the Flying Cloud,’ cried Roger.

  This was to be their own ship for a while. They had chartered it in Sydney and had left it in the shipyard to be fitted with tanks to hold the fish and other sea animals they hoped to capture to send home to their father’s aquarium in Long Island. It would carry their prizes to Sydney where they would be transferred on cargo vessels to America.

  They had named it Flying Cloud because of its glorious white cloud of sails.

  Chapter 6

  The good ship, Flying Cloud

  ‘Let’s go aboard the Flying Cloud,’ Roger said excitedly. ‘I’ll start the motor.’

  ‘No, wait,’ said Hal. ‘First we’d better talk about this a bit. We can’t go aboard.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We might get the bends.’

  Roger objected, ‘You’re off your head. You get the bends when you’ve been breathing ordinary air. We’ve been breathing helium.’

  ‘You’re right - and wrong,’ said Hal. ‘It’s true that you have more trouble if you’ve been breathing air, because air is eighty per cent nitrogen. If you don’t come up very slowly and give your lungs time to get rid of the nitrogen it makes bubbles in your blood that cause cramps in your muscles and joints, and that’s what they call the bends. The helium mixture that you’ve been breathing has only a small amount of oxygen and nitrogen, so you’re not so likely to get a bad case of the bends. But still you have to be careful. I’ll tell you what we can do. We can go up until the top of the jeep is just above the surface. Then we can get a good look at our ship. But we’ll stay there only a minute and come right down. Now you can start the motor.’

  Roger looked at the dolphin, swimming round and round the jeep. ‘I just had a better idea. Let’s go without the motor.’

  ‘How can you do that?’

  ‘Let Bottle take us. He can be a big help to us if we train him right. Now’s a good chance to begin.’

  He slipped oat of the jeep and stopped the circling dolphin who clicked and clattered affectionately and rubbed against him much as a cat rubs itself against the legs of a friendly human.

  Roger took the end of the tow rope attached to the nose of the jeep and placed it in the dolphin’s mouth. Then, with his hand still on the rope, he started to swim towards the Flying Cloud, gently drawing the dolphin along with him.

  Once the dolphin separated his jaws and the line dropped out. Roger replaced it and pinched the jaws together to give his friend the idea that he must hold the line tight. The boy guided the dolphin close to the ship where a rope ladder dangled to the water.

  A sailor who had seen the operation came down and took the end of the line.

  The dolphin had learned his first lesson. Hal understood what Roger was trying to do. He wanted to make Bottle a good messenger between Undersea City and the Flying Cloud. The boys themselves could not go up and down without some danger of getting the bends, but the dolphin had no such difficulty. Dolphins could and did swim up and down between the surface and depths of a thousand feet or more without the least trouble. They were ideal delivery boys. A famous dolphin, Tuffy, made a name for himself as an expert messenger carrying mail, tools, and supplies between the surface ship and Sealab II, two hundred feet down.

  With the top of the glass jeep above water, the boys could plainly see their ship and the captain looking over the rail. They had met him before in Sydney where they had chartered the ship along with Ted Murphy and his two-man crew.

  Captain Ted was a genial man with a leathery face,

  tanned by the tropic sun and wrinkled by smiles and rough weather.

  The Flying Cloud was Captain Ted’s own ship, but it belonged to the boys as long as they held their charter. And they were very proud of it. From bowsprit to rudder it measured eighty feet and had a beam of thirty. It was equipped with an auxiliary engine but depended chiefly upon its magnificent spread of sail. Its engine served only to get it in and out between the reefs. Given a fair wind, its sails would carry it along at seventeen knots. Indeed it had formerly been used as a racing yacht and had won several of the annual cup races.

  Hal had ordered the construction of specimen tanks, and the captain now assured him that they had been built - two large tanks for the large fish, and several small ones so that creatures who were inclined to eat each other could be kept apart. All the tanks had lids that could be left off in fair weather but clamped shut in rough weather so that fish and water could not splash out.

  Hal congratulated the captain on a good job, then powered the jeep down. Roger was feeling his right shoulder.

  ‘What’s the matter, kid?’ Hal asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Roger said.

  ‘When you say nothing, it’s something. Your shoulder hurts - right? We’ll go deeper.’

  When the depth gauge registered nearly two hundred feet Roger showed relief. ‘Pain’s gone,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said Hal. ‘That was a near one. It just shows that we can’t risk running up and down.’

  ‘Then how’ll we ever get out?’

  ‘When we get ready to come out permanently we will have to come up very, very slowly to allow plenty of time to get rid of the nitrogen. A real case of the bends could paralyse a man for life. Remember that poor old fellow we saw in a wheelchair in the Hawaiian Islands? He had been diving off the coast of Lahaina to get black coral which grows only at great depths. That was forty years ago. He’s been in a wheelchair ever since. He was lucky. Other black coral divers have died as soon as they got to the surface.’

  The dolphin faithfully followed them down. They parked the glass bug in the garage and crawled up into their cottage. Bottle stuck his head up through the hole and started a conversation.

  It’s nice to get down again,’ said Roger. ‘Boy, wasn’t it hot up there? Must have been over a hundred degrees.’ He looked at a thermometer on the wall. ‘Here it’s only seventy-five.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hal said. ‘There’s a lot to be said for undersea climate. It’s really better than the climate topside. People who live beneath the sea will not be bothered by typhoons, cyclones, tornadoes and hurricanes, thunder and lightning. There will be no snowstorms or hailstorms, no sand-and dust-storms like those that plague the American West. No smog. No flood will wash away an underwater town, no fire can burn homes that are insulated by water. No noise except the croaks of croaker fish, grunts of groupers, and other small sounds. It’s been called “the silent world”. It’s not silent, but its sounds are nothing compared with the roar of cars, trucks, trains, and planes.

  There are plenty of difficulties and dangers down here but bad weather and noise are not among them. The temperature which goes popping up and down on land, is not so wobbly beneath the sea. It stays about the same, day and night, week after week, year after year.<
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  ‘You do have to watch out for sea animals that bite, scratch or sting - but wounds generally heal almost overnight. Cousteau found that out in his village under the Red Sea. On the ship up above, in the burning heat, ordinary cuts took as much as three weeks to heal. Below, the same wounds disappeared in two days. Something to do with the difference in bacteria. The men up above steadily lost weight. The men below stayed rosy and plump. There’s a chance that in the future people who live out their lives beneath the sea will live longer, perhaps to well over a hundred.’

  Bottle was bouncing up and down, eager to play, work, do something.

  ‘I’ll give you something to do,’ Roger said.

  He wrote on a piece of paper, Just to see if it works.

  He put it in a plastic bag, tied the bag shut with cord and put the end of the cord between the dolphin’s teeth.

  Would the dolphin remember the last time a rope was put in his mouth?

  At once Bottle dropped out of the hole, swam swiftly upwards and out of sight.

  In only two or three minutes he was back, the bag still hanging from his mouth. Roger was disappointed. ‘There hasn’t been time for him to get up to the ship and back. I guess he’s not as bright as I thought.’

  He took the bag and opened it. ‘Yes, my note is still there. You dumb dolphin! A fine messenger boy you are.’

  Idly, he unfolded the paper. Then he gave an excited yelp. Under his note the captain had written, it works.

  Roger stroked the wet head of the dolphin. ‘I beg your pardon for saying you were dumb. You’re as smart as they come. And how speedy!’

  Swift delivery between sea bottom and ship was now possible. It was no small victory, and Hal was as pleased as Roger. But the most pleased seemed to be the dolphin. He whistled with pride and pleasure. But at this moment something or someone gave him a violent jab and he disappeared.

  A face by no means so pleasant as the dolphin’s came up through the hole.