11 Diving Adventure

by Willard Price

  Now it was the same thing over again except that the killer was a shark instead of a dragon and there was no princess.

  Armed with a spear of the finest steel with a point as sharp as a needle, Roger sallied forth. But just in case the spear should fail, he carried an extra weapon - an underwater revolver.

  People had left their shelters and were once more walking or swimming along Main Street. They panicked again when the great shark cast its shadow on the street. One pretty girl who did not move quickly enough was caught between the huge jaws and held, to be eaten at leisure. She took the place of the princess in the old legend, and St George Roger Hunt was here to save her.

  This time he had no fear. His concern for the girl’s life made him brave. He put all the power he could muster into the thrust of his sharp spear.

  He did not even see a dent. He had done nothing but bend the point of his spear.

  Disgusted, he dropped the spear and drew his revolver. He had read accounts of hunters who had fired at a shark only to have their bullets bounce back from the beast’s armour plate. He didn’t believe such stories. How could the toughest skin resist a bullet?

  He fired. The bullet bounced back as if it had struck a steel spring. It struck Roger in the leaden weight belt. If it had landed an inch higher or an inch lower it would have finished him off.

  However, the bullet had disturbed the shark more than either the knife or the spear. It opened its jaws and dropped its prey. She lay crumpled up on the street. The mouthpiece of her aqualung had fallen from her lips and she must die within a few minutes for lack of air. Roger tried to replace the mouthpiece but the unconscious girl could not hold it.

  He looked wildly about for help. The shark was coming back. The nearest place of escape was the hatch of the hotel. Roger dragged her up through the opening on the floor. Here she could breathe without the aqualung. She gradually revived, and was taken to another room to rest after her harrowing ordeal.

  A baffled and humbled St George looked out of the hotel window at his victorious enemy which was nosing the glass on the other side. Roger didn’t feel like St George any more. This was a tougher job than he had bargained for.

  Then another idea came to him. He knew that the mako was an expert jumper. Makos have been known to leap out of the water ten or fifteen feet high. With their hatred of humans, they would sometimes make this tremendous jump just in order to fall down on a small boat, break it in two and drown the passengers.

  Sometimes the leap killed the mako. If it leaped near a beach it was apt to fall on the beach and be unable to get back into the water. After wriggling about in vain it would die.

  If he could make this mako jump - but there was no beach to land on. How about the hotel lobby? The ‘front door’ in the floor was much larger than that in any house. The ceiling was the highest in town. If the mako could be persuaded to leap up into the air-filled room, fall on the floor, and be unable to get out again, it would die.

  The hotel manager might not like the idea but Roger wasn’t going to ask the hotel manager.

  How could he draw the shark inside? He himself must be the bait. He dropped through the great door into the water and swam out where the shark could see him. It immediately stopped trying to nose its way in through the window and swam under the hotel after the boy. Roger was only a few feet ahead of it when he clambered up into the lobby.

  The shark soared up like a rocket and collapsed on the floor. Any guests left in the lobby lost no time in making themselves scarce. The big room was left to Roger and the shark.

  Roger felt the flush of victory. This was the end of the killer of Undersea City. Now people could come and go in peace - or would be able to as soon as the beast died. That would not take long. Roger made himself comfortable in an easy chair and waited for it to happen.

  It didn’t happen. The shark began to squirm and twist, and its tail, still down in the water, thrashed about violently, drawing the body inch by inch back through the hole. As Roger watched helplessly, the mako dropped through into the sea and swam away.

  The disappointed hunter went home.

  ‘Did you get it?’ said Hal.

  ‘No luck,’ Roger said. ‘I’m going to try laser. Why didn’t we think of that before?’

  ‘Because it’s not worth thinking about.’ Hal said. ‘Our laser is a small outfit. It will kill fish as big as marlin or grouper or sailfish, but it wouldn’t have any effect on a twenty-five foot shark. I think you’ve done about all you can in this little contest and you’ll have to admit that the mako is the winner.’

  ‘And I suppose you’ll say, “I told you so,”’ Roger said bitterly.

  ‘I’ll say no such thing. I think you’ve put up a good fight and you shouldn’t be ashamed because a twenty-five-foot beast was too much for a five-foot boy.’

  But Roger was not ready to give up. He racked his brain. There must be a way to get the better of that rascal. Then a spark of fire came into his eyes.

  ‘I’m going to try one more thing,’ he said, and dropped through the door.

  He went again into Main Street and entered a shop advertising ‘Miner’s Supplies’. The walls were covered with the tools of mining - picks, pans, shovels, drills, instruments for measuring gravity and electrical discharges, magnetometers, gravimeters and spectroscopes. But Roger didn’t see what he wanted.

  ‘Don’t you have explosives?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the shop assistant. ‘We keep them locked up. But we don’t sell them to boys. What is it you want an explosive for?’

  ‘To explode.’

  ‘To explode what? Copper ore, lead, tin - what?’

  ‘A shark,’ Roger said.

  The shop assistant stared. ‘A shark?’

  ‘The one that is killing people in this town.’

  The shop assistant hesitated. ‘It all sounds very irregular,’ he said. ‘Have you any authority?’

  ‘Call up Dr Dick,’ Roger suggested.

  The shop assistant went to the phone. He got Dr Dick on the line. ‘There’s a boy here who wants explosive to blow up a shark.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Dr Dick asked.

  The shop assistant turned to Roger. ‘What’s your

  name?’

  ‘Roger Hunt.’

  ‘His name is Roger Hunt,’ said the shop assistant over the phone.

  ‘Let him have anything he wants,’ said Dr Dick.

  The shop assistant hung up and turned to Roger. ‘Why didn’t you tell me your name was Hunt? Everybody here knows what you and your brother have been doing.’ He opened his safe. It was full of deadly-looking contraptions. He took out what appeared to be a steel ball with a clock in its side.

  ‘I suppose your shark won’t stay still and wait to be exploded. So you won’t have a chance to plug in at any electrical outlet. You’ll need something automatic - like this. Set the clock ahead and you’ll have time to get out of the way before it goes off.’

  ‘Just the thing,’ Roger said. ‘What do I owe you?’

  ‘Not a red cent. That shark killed two friends of mine. If we can help you get rid of it we’re only too glad to do so.’ He put the ball into a waterproof sack and handed it to his young customer.

  Roger went next to a butcher’s shop. ‘I want a chunk of meat big enough to put this inside.’

  The butcher was bewildered. He had never had an order like this before. ‘Well, I don’t know. Let me see. It would fall out of almost anything you could put it into. Except - how about a suckling pig? You could jam that thing down its throat and it would stay in.’

  ‘Fine,’ Roger said.

  The butcher brought out the carcass of a small pig from the freezer. Roger went out with the ball under one arm and the pig under the other.

  The butcher looked after him and shook his head. ‘Crazy as a loon,’ he said.

  Roger had to wait half an hour before he saw the shark slowly approaching down Main Street. He acted fast. He laid the pig in the middle of the street
where the

  shark could not fail to notice it. He did not need to remove the watertight bag from the ball because it was transparent and he could see the control for setting the clock. He moved it to a five-minute delay. Then he jammed it, bag and all, down the small throat of the pig into the large stomach.

  Other people had already scurried to safety and Roger now did the same. He watched from a shop window.

  The man-eater lazied down the street looking for a victim. It saw the pig, swooped down, and swallowed it at one gulp.

  Roger looked at the watertight watch on his wrist. Two minutes of the five had already gone by. He hoped the shark would wander on down the middle of the street where the explosion could not injure any person or damage a building.

  But the big fish was not moving away. It nosed about, evidently hunting for another juicy bit like the one it had just enjoyed. Only three minutes were left before that thing would go off.

  If the shark had stayed out in the open Roger would not have been worried. He became nervous when he saw the beast edging over towards the buildings. Only two minutes now. The creature explored the ground under the butcher’s shop. Only one minute was left.

  The shark moved next door under the shop where Roger and others had taken refuge. Roger was sorry he had ever started this thing. If people were killed it would be his fault. He would never forgive himself, nor would anybody else forgive him. He could feel the cold sweat running down his back.

  Only fifty seconds now, then forty, then thirty. How strong was that explosive? Would it blow up the building and kill all the occupants? Twenty seconds.

  Failing to find any more pigs, the shark idly swam out again into the street. With a dull thud the charge went off. The effect was immediate. The man-eater of Undersea City turned upside down and slowly sank to the bottom. A hole as big as a barrel was torn in the white hide that had been too tough for knives, spears, or bullets.

  Men began to grope through the hold for the valuable parts that may make a big shark worth seven thousand dollars.

  Out came the great liver, eight feet long and weighing well up towards a hundred pounds. From it would come a valuable oil and vitamins A and D.

  The hide would make excellent leather. The teeth would be used for razors, weapons and surgical instruments. They would also be fashioned into costume jewellery. The fins could be sent to China to make the famous shark’s-fin soup. The cartilage (the shark has no true bones) would become a high-protein food. The air bladders could be made into isinglass for gelatine or glue. The great jaws were taken by the proprietor of the Undersea City curio store. Indeed, as was once said of the hog, everything about the shark is usable but his breath.

  The heart was pulled out, and it lay, still beating, in the hands of the man who had found it. That is one of the amazing things about this amazing animal - the heart keeps on going after the fish is dead. A. Hyatt Verrill, noted sailor and author, reported that the heart removed from a fifteen-foot tiger shark captured at Silver Shoals throbbed steadily as it was passed from man to man. Even after it was tossed on the deck, it continued to beat for more than an hour until the blazing sun dried and shrivelled its surface.

  It is really not so astonishing, after all, when we remember that a snake may wriggle long after it is dead,

  and the piranha of the Amazon after its head has been cut off will continue to snap its murderous jaws.

  One thing about the shark remained really alive. This was a remora, or sucker fish, which is in the habit of clamping its vacuum mouth on the hide of a large fish and taking a free ride. But what made it more extraordinary in this case was that the remora was inside the shark’s mouth, glued to the tongue. It was pulled away and given to a small boy who took it home to have it cooked for supper.

  What about the eight people who had been killed by this villain? No trace of them was found. Even the bones were gone. The shark’s powerful stomach acids can dissolve bones in a few hours.

  However, there was plenty of proof of the monster’s guilt. Among the shark’s stomach contents were not only bottles, cans, chunks of wood, and scrap iron, but bracelets, necklaces, long hair, a pair of spectacles, and many other articles that had been worn by the shark’s victims.

  A woman recognized a large hunting knife that had belonged to her husband. She seized it, then hastily dropped it, as if she had been burned. The hydrochloric acid in the shark’s digestive juices is so powerful that it will promptly scorch human flesh that happens to touch it. The woman wrapped the knife in a piece of seaweed, then sadly took it home.

  The flesh of the shark was cut into chunks which the mayor distributed to workmen from the South Sea islands who did not share the Americans’ distaste for shark meat.

  One of the hotel’s lady guests who had been watching all this bloody business seemed to be very weak in the knees. She turned to go back to the hotel. The mayor of Undersea City noticed that she alone was leaving with empty hands. He must give her something. He pressed into her hands the big heart, still palpitating.

  The lady looked as if she were about to faint. She could not offend the mayor by refusing the gift. She gingerly carried it through the crowd, a painful smile on her face.

  An island woman looked at the heart as if she would like to have it. The nervous visitor was only too glad to get rid of it. She gave it to the woman who happily carried it home. It would probably beat until it was time to cook it for dinner. It was hard to get fresh meat in Undersea City, and what could be fresher than this?

  Chapter 19

  Gold!

  Hal sat alone in the glass jeep, superintending his ‘cowboys’ - the dolphins who were guarding the lobster farm.

  They circled the field, keeping ofF marauders, large fish that considered lobsters a very dainty meal. Even sharks feared the swift attacks and sharp teeth of the dolphins.

  Hal saw a bumpfish at work. This was a rare specimen. He must get it. The bumpfish has a very hard head like the bumper of an automobile. The bumpfish dives swiftly at a coral block and hits it so powerfully that a piece of the coral is broken off. It then chews up the coral, not because it likes coral, but because the small living polyps in the coral are its favourite food.

  This bumpfish was breaking off pieces of coral as big as a fist and chewing them up to get at the tiny animals inside.

  Hal slipped out of the jeep, swam down very quietly so that the fish would not notice him, grabbed it and popped it into a plastic bag full of sea water. He returned to the jeep and settled down to examine his prize.

  The fish swam about madly. It was so excited that it spilled the ground-up coral from its mouth. Hal was startled to see among the grains of coral other sparkling grains that looked very much like gold.

  He looked again at the hump of coral on the sea floor where the fish had been feasting. Why had the little coral animals chosen this place to build their homes? It was mostly covered with sand. The fish must have pushed some of the sand aside to get at the coral. What had made this little hill? Was there a rock under the coral? Or just a heap of sand?

  He turned on the laser and directed the beam at the curious hump. Immediately the dial on the machine showed that there was really something very hard down there.

  With his laser beam he explored the edge of the hard thing for about a hundred feet Then there was no more of it. He came back on the other side until he reached the other end.

  The thing had had the shape of a ship. It must be a ship. That was not strange. These were dangerous waters. Many ships had been lost in the Coral Sea off the Great Barrier Reef.

  But why the gold?

  Then he remembered Australia’s great Gold Rush of a century ago. Ships had flocked to Australia from all over the world. In a single year nearly a hundred million dollars’ worth of gold had been taken in ships bound for Europe or America. Some of the vessels never finished the trip. They sank in the storms of the Great Barrier Reef. They could not be salvaged. In those days divers could not descend to such depths
.

  Almost breathless with excitement, Hal went down with a hammer and knocked off pieces of coral. Every piece showed those golden glints. This was gold dust. The sacks in which it had been stored had long since rotted away and the dust was scattered in the sand and had become part of the growing coral.

  He struck deeper and came upon a solid bar of gold about a foot long. Then he found another, and another. This was too much. He felt dizzy. He took an armful of bars and swam up to the jeep. At this depth the bars were no heavier than sticks of wood. But when he tried

  to lift them into the jeep they showed their real weight.

  He phoned Captain Ted in the Flying Cloud above.

  ‘Let down the vac. I’ve found something pretty wonderful.’

  He impatiently waited until the big vacuum tube sank down.

  ‘Turn on the power,’ he telephoned.

  ‘What’s coming up?’ inquired Captain Ted.

  ‘Sand.’

  ‘And you call that wonderful?’

  ‘No. But we have to get rid of the sand before we can get at what’s beneath.’

  ‘And what’s beneath?’

  ‘Gold.’

  ‘Thundering fishhooks,’ exclaimed the captain.

  When the sand was cleared away what was left of the wreck was plainly visible. During the century, since it had gone to the bottom much of it had rotted and disappeared. The strongly built bulwarks and keel were still there. The sacks that had contained the gold dust had melted away during the century underwater and so had the chests or boxes in which the gold bars had been packed. But all that didn’t matter. The important thing was that the bars were still there.

  Hal wondered what he should do. Should he go at once and report to Dr Dick? Why should he? He was not working for Dr Dick now, he was on his own. The wreck did not lie within the limits of Undersea City. It was a good two miles out of town.

  These were Australian waters. Of any treasure found there half belonged to the man who discovered it and half to the Australian government.