11 Diving Adventure

by Willard Price

  One big snake, after due inspection of these strange creatures, resolved to try its luck. It shot in and closed its fangs on the seat of Hal’s swimming trunks. It squirted some of its poison into the cloth, then waited for this big animal to die. Its teeth had certainly penetrated what it supposed to be the skin of this beast, and by all the rules of snakedom the poison should spread through the body, causing terrible convulsions, and death.

  It was doubtless quite surprised when things didn’t work out as it had planned. Instead, it suddenly felt a choking grip around its throat just behind the head.

  Hal jerked it loose from the cloth and stuffed it, wriggling violently, into a plastic sack he had brought with him.

  Three more snakes charged in and joined the others in the sack. Roger had not yet had a visitor.

  But now he found himself unable to move his right leg. Perhaps he had been bitten and had not felt it. Hal had told him that the fang of a sea snake is so sharp that the bite is not felt. Roger went cold with fear. He tried again to move his leg. Surely he had been bitten and the leg was numb. The numbness would spread and soon he would not be able to move a muscle. Then the terrible pains would start.

  He could still swim with his left leg but the right one was no good. Soon the left also would go back on him. He was sorry now that he had been so cocky. He should have stayed in the jeep as his brother advised.

  He put his hand down and gripped his right leg. Much to his surprise, he felt the pressure of his fingers. The leg was not numb after all. Then what was the trouble? Had he caught his foot in a tangle of seaweed?

  It is not easy to see in all directions through a face mask. But he managed to look down and saw the answer to the mystery of the wooden leg.

  A snake nine feet long had buried its fangs in the rubber of his flipper.

  Roger tried to kick it off but the weight of the big snake was enough to hold the leg rigid. He swatted the unwelcome visitor with his other fin. With the fin he tried to scrape it off, but it hung on like grim death.

  Then he reached down, took it by the neck, and pulled. It came loose, taking a piece of the fin with it.

  It began whipping about and Roger could hardly hold it. Hal saw what had happened and came with the sack. Before he could get to his brother, the snake had wound itself tightly around Roger’s arm. Luckily it was not a constrictor like a boa or python and was not in the habit of squeezing its victims to death. It trusted its poison fangs to do this deadly work.

  Roger tried to tear it off with his other hand. Hal had joined him now and both boys exerted all their strength to pull away the black and yellow coils. Finally it came loose and Roger stuffed it into the bag.

  But as he let go of the neck the snake twisted its head and one fang brushed against his hand.

  It was just a scrape and Roger thought nothing of it He was greatly relieved to get this pest safe in the sack.

  Hal put his hand on Roger’s arm and drew him back to the jeep. They climbed in.

  ‘Let me see that,’ Hal said.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Roger.

  ‘Let me see it anyway.’

  ‘It’s only a scratch. Look.’

  A drop of blood was welling from the scratch.

  Hal brushed away the blood. He put his mouth to the slight abrasion, sucked hard, then spat. He sucked again and again until he was blue in the face.

  ‘A lot of monkey business about nothing,’ Roger said.

  ‘I’m not so sure of that,’ said Hal. ‘You didn’t get much. It won’t be enough to finish you off. But it may be enough to make you mighty uncomfortable. Wish we had some antiserum. But it hasn’t been invented yet.’

  ‘I thought you had some.’

  ‘For land-snake bite - not sea snake. If you had just waited until we could get these snakes to a lab and get some antiserum back … But you were in too much of a hurry.’

  In spite of his joking manner, Hal was worried. He had tied a tourniquet of rope around the wrist above the scratch. He must release it every thirty minutes. He continued the mouth-to-hand treatment.

  ‘I don’t feel a thing,’ Roger said, ‘except a little stiffness.’

  Hal looked at him anxiously. ‘That’s the first sign of trouble,’ he said.

  ‘But it isn’t my hand that is stiff. It’s my legs.’

  That’s the way it starts,’ Hal said. ‘Funny, how a bit of poison in your hand can make your legs stiff. Then the stiffness slowly goes up through your body.’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better exercise my legs to keep them limber.’

  ‘No. Lie still. I’d better get you back to the house and into bed.’

  ‘Bed nothing. You’re making a big thing out of nothing.’

  But Hal was already at the controls. He put on full power and the jeep sped to town. Arriving home, he helped Roger out of his clothes and into bed.

  By this time the stiffness had risen to the neck. It climbed farther to the jaws. It might cause lockjaw. Roger could speak only with difficulty and complained that he could hardly swallow. But he wanted to swallow because there was a burning or dryness in his throat and he was uncommonly thirsty.

  Hal took his pulse. It was not fast, but it was weak and irregular.

  The poison had reached the eyes. The pupils were dilated and the eyelids drooped.

  Then the pains began. The muscles of Roger’s arms and legs jumped and twitched. It seemed to Roger that every nerve in his body was hopping. Spasms of pain ran through him from head to toe. Hal found that the patient’s skin was cold and clammy. He covered him with another blanket.

  The next hour was pure torture. Convulsions racked the poisoned body. Roger had never known such suffering. He wanted to scream. But men did not scream. Trying to control himself, he bit his lip until it bled. He could hardly breathe. He felt as if an elephant were sitting on his chest.

  The convulsions suddenly ended when he became unconscious. Hal anxiously put his fingers on the boy’s pulse. He could feel nothing.

  After a few moments there was a slight throb, then-a very feeble beat. It was come and go. It would stop for as much as ten seconds and begin again.

  Finally the boy passed from unconsciousness into normal sleep. The heartbeat became stronger. This lad was a tough customer - he wouldn’t die easily. Hal sat by his bed all night.

  He was ready to give up his search for poisons to be turned into medicines. The idea had seemed good, but now he hated it. It was a thing that ought to be done, but why not let others do it?

  Roger slept late the next morning. When he opened his eyes the pupils were back to normal and there was no droop in the eyelids. He lay quietly without any sign of pain.

  ‘You poor boob,’ he said. ‘How long have you been sitting there?’

  ‘A while,’ said Hal. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Just fine. Rarin’ to go.’

  He threw off the covers, got up, and began to dress.

  ‘Hadn’t you better stay quiet?’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ Roger said. “Fraid I’ve been wasting a lot of time, lying there half the day when there’s so much to do.’

  ‘There’s nothing to do,’ Hal said.

  ‘But your poisons?’ said Roger.

  Hal said, ‘We’re quitting all that. We’ll find something else to do.’

  Roger scolded. ‘Listen, big brother, you don’t need to baby me. Don’t tell me you’re quitting. You’re no quitter, and neither am I. I tell you I’m all right. I bet you haven’t had breakfast yet, and I’m hungry too. Let’s have a snack, then get back to our nice little poisons.’

  Chapter 12

  The floating death

  So they went out again, looking for trouble.

  There was no lack of that under the sea. Plenty of beauty, plenty of trouble. Thousands of harmless and lovely angels such as the angelfish and moorish idols. Hundreds of ugly creatures that looked and acted like the devil.

  Some were both beautiful and devilish.

  The
first the boys saw was one of the handsomest creatures of the sea. It had as many gorgeous plumes as an Indian chief’s headdress.

  ‘It looks like a bird of paradise,’ Roger said.

  ‘Yes,’ said his brother. ‘Or a peacock. But those fine feathers conceal stingers full of poison. Especially at the back end of the fish.’

  ‘What good do they do back there? I should think he’d have them up at the business end.’

  ‘The back end is the business end. And it’s really a very clever arrangement. Any fish would expect the danger to be up front. This rascal takes them by surprise. When he sees some creature he wants to eat, he passes and goes ahead of it. The fish he is after thinks it is safe and pays no more attention. Then suddenly the lionfish shoots backwards and stabs it with his rear spines. The poison promptly kills the fish, and the lionfish can feast upon it at leisure.’

  ‘Why do they call it the lionfish?’

  ‘Because some people think its plumes look like the mane of a lion. I’ll go and get it.’

  ‘Let me,’ Roger said.

  Before his brother could object he grabbed his sack and slid out of the jeep.

  The lionfish took an interest in him at once. It came close and studied him with big eyes. Then it pretended to have other business, and passed him. It stopped and drifted. Then it came back like a bolt of lightning going the wrong way.

  Roger slid out of its path at the last instant and held the sack with its mouth wide open. The lionfish shot into it tail first and Roger flipped the bag shut. He tied it to one of the legs of the jeep and got back inside. The whole operation had not taken two minutes.

  Hal congratulated him. ‘Pretty neat,’ he said. ‘There’s a sea wasp. This time it’s my turn.’

  ‘But that’s only a jellyfish. Does it have any poison?’

  ‘I’ll say it has. The sea wasp has killed a lot Of people along the Australian coast. Some scientists say it’s the most venomous marine animal known. A boy twelve years old up near Darwin was swimming when one of these things showed up just ahead of him. He thought it was harmless and brushed it away. He died in seven minutes. Another swimmer was finished in three minutes. He was pulled out with the sea wasp still clinging to his dead body. When they pulled it off the skin came with it. Always look out for jellyfish. Most of them won’t do you a bit of harm except perhaps give you an itchy skin, but there are a few that are downright murder. And when you can’t tell which are the bad ones, it’s best to avoid them all.’

  The sea wasp wasn’t going anywhere. It didn’t need to. All it had to do was to wait until something brushed through its tentacles.

  It happened very soon. A fish as large as the sea wasp itself wandered into the stingers and lay dead. Then the sea. wasp performed a miracle. It protruded its stomach,

  wrapped the fish in its folds, and drew it inside. It expanded to accommodate this meal and was twice as big as before. As it digested the fish it would shrink to its former size.

  When Hal came out it made no effort to move away. The mushy body was scooped up without difficulty and another bag was tied to the jeep.

  ‘Be nice if everything were as easy as that,’ Hal said when he returned.

  Roger spied a pretty shell on a ledge of the reef. He instantly dropped out and was astonished when he was grabbed by the hair and pulled back into the jeep.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ he demanded.

  ‘Before you grab that shell, I want to tell you something about it. That’s a cone shell.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me about cone shells. I’ve picked up lots of them.’

  ‘But not that kind. There are more than four hundred species of cone shells, but only six of them are very poisonous. This is one of them.’

  ‘But it’s so small, it can’t really be bad.’

  ‘It is bad - one of the worst. It’s called a marbled cone because it looks like patterned marble. Go ahead and get it but take it by the large end. The small end is open and just inside there is a little black animal with a stinger like a harpoon that it is ready to jab into anything that comes along.’

  ‘It must be a very tiny stinger,’ said Roger. ‘How could that hurt you?’

  ‘It’s connected with a sac of deadly poison. One little squirt of that, and you would be dead.’

  ‘Aren’t you exaggerating?’

  ‘Not a bit. An Australian boy walking on top of the reef when it is bare at low tide, picked up one of these and held it in bis closed hand. The thing stung him on his finger. The poison acted so fast that he was dead in three minutes. Now, go ahead, but take it by the large end.’

  Roger left the jeep and swam close to the ledge. The shell looked so harmless. It was only about an inch and a half long. The large end was closed, the small end was the front door. It was a tiny opening, no bigger than the head of a pin. Roger could not see inside the hole.

  He took out his knife and tapped on .the shell. Instantly what looked like a black needle came out of the hole. Finding nothing to murder, it drew back into the shell.

  Roger picked up the shell by the large end and held it gingerly as he swam back to the jeep.

  ‘Wish I had a toothpick,’ Hal said.

  ‘What do you want with a toothpick?’

  ‘To plug up that hole. Of course out of water the thing will die - but that will take some hours. In the meantime it’s a dangerous thing to have lying around. You might pot your hand or foot on it and then good night. When we get home we’ll plug the hole shut with a toothpick or chewing gum or whatever else we have handy. A lab will be glad to get this. Its poison is more powerful, drop for drop, than the poison of a big land snake. And it can be converted into a number of different medicines.’

  1 still can’t understand,’ Roger said, ‘how something that can kill you can be made into something that can cure you.’

  Hal agreed. ‘We don’t pretend to understand it. Even the lab men don’t. But it works. Just as the bad-smelling stuff a civet cat shoots out can be made into perfume, or garbage can be made into soap. Perhaps there’s nothing in the world that is altogether bad.’

  The search for bad-good fish continued. It was not hard to find them. Possibly nowhere else in the world was there so great a gathering of sea creatures as along the face of the Great Barrier Reef.

  The sea scorpion was added to the collection.

  ‘Boy, is it ugly,’ said Roger. ‘Like something out of a nightmare.’

  ‘Ugly and edible,’ said Hal. ‘The French consider it very .good to eat. They make one of their famous soups out of it.’

  ‘Where is the stinger?’ Roger asked, examining the specimen they had captured.

  ‘He carries it in a very strange place. It’s underneath. Instead of killing its victims by shooting forwards or backwards it surprises them by dropping down on them.’

  ‘The sea is full of surprises,’ said Roger.

  ‘I’ll say it is,’ agreed Hal.

  The stonefish, so ugly that it is called the ‘horrida’, was added to the collection. It is also called ‘the waiting one’ because it doesn’t move from morning to night. It simply lies on the ground waiting for someone to make a mistake. It is about the colour of the sea bottom and is usually half concealed by mud or sand. A man wading or swimming is very likely to step on it and the poisonous spines that stand up from its warty back stab his foot. Fish grazing along the bottom for food suddenly become food for the stonefish when they are stabbed by the spines which then bend to push them over into the great mouth,

  The boys did not make the mistake of stepping on it. That was the mistake of a crab which crawled over the waiting one only to be caught on the spines and promptly eaten.

  Although it did not move, catching it was a delicate matter. You could not grab it by the spiny back. When Hal tried to pick it up by the tail it clung to the rock beneath.

  Roger brought the jeep into position so that its iron claw could close on the stonefish. Then he backed the jeep and pulled the thing lo
ose. Hal held a sack open below the victim, Roger opened the iron jaws, and the horrida was bagged.

  Both boys breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I’m glad that’s over,’ Hal said. ‘Just one little jab from those spines and if you didn’t die you might go insane and spend the rest of your life wandering around as crazy as a loon. It’s the chief cause of insanity among the islanders of the South Seas.’

  The jeep was now within two feet of the reef and through its glass wall they could see the reef builders at work. Some people suppose that you have to have a microscope to see these tiny coral animals, called polyps. This is not always true. The polyps are different sizes. Some are no larger than pinheads. Some are half an inch wide and can be plainly seen with their flowerlike tentacles extended, each polyp sitting in a cup of limestone secreted from its own body.

  The word polyp sounds as if the thing might be a bit of pulp or plant growth, not the well-constructed and efficient animal that it is. It gathers food, builds a house for itself, poisons unwelcome visitors, and erects a monument far greater than the Washington Monument or the Taj Mahal.

  All about the boys was an underwater paradise. They looked down on a dream forest. Imagine a twenty-foot tree bearing only one leaf twenty feet broad. It and a hundred like it had been built by the small coral animal. Under the shadow of the great leaf hundreds of brilliant little fish flitted like butterflies.

  And there was something that looked like the banyan, a tree with a hundred trunks like the columns in a cathedral. It was densely covered with coral leaves, and under them a scuba diver might easily get lost exploring the submarine labyrinth.

  This part of the ocean floor did not look like a floor, but like the top of a fantastic woodland seen from an aeroplane - a jungle of trees of all sizes. What a thrill to look down between the weird branches into these blue and purple canyons, where tiny flecks of colour shot in and out among the twigs while bigger and more solemn fish swam slowly near the bottom.

  The colours looked delicate and the stone leaves fragile, and it was an odd sensation when the jeep bumped against one and found it as hard as rock.