Treasure of Acapulco

by Witton, Dorothy

  Like all Acapulco boys, he had known how to skin dive with a mask, almost from the time he had learned to walk and swim. It was not until three years ago that he had learned to dive with an aqualung, when one of the wealthier boys in the neighborhood had owned the equipment and generously loaned it often. However, the boy had since moved away and Tony's only opportunity to use an aqualung had been occasional times when the professional divers gave him odd jobs which they didn't want themselves.

  Although it was not yet ten o'clock, Peter was already at the appointed spot on the beach when he arrived. He was sitting with his arms folded around his bony knees,

  watching the bathers and water skiers with a thoughtful expression in his blue eyes. Beside him, on the sand, was a pile of heavy equipment: two tanks of compressed air, lead belts, masks and fins.

  "How did you ever get all that stuff down here by yourself—and where did you get it?" Tony asked curiously.

  Peter smiled. "Dad helped me carry it down from the skin diving shop on the coast boulevard," he said. "He rented it. You see, this is my birthday. I told him this was what I wanted for a present—to rent this stuff for us."

  "Vaya!" Tony pulled his mind away from his own problems. "Felicidades, amigol" He put his arm around Peter's shoulders and pounded his back in the customary Mexican birthday embrace. "Why didn't you tell me this morning? I would have sung you the mananitas! You know what the mananitas are?"

  "Sure," Peter answered shyly. "The birthday serenades. I've heard them many times since we came to Mexico. It's a nice custom."

  "How old are you today?" Tony asked.

  "Fifteen."

  "Not much younger than me," Tony mused. "Somehow you seem younger than that, even."

  "I've always been kind of small for my age," Peter said and then hurried on, as though wanting to leave that subject. "Where do we go for this skin diving, Tony?"

  "Roqueta Island is best, around the rocks. I'll get one of my launchman friends to take us over."

  When they had unloaded their gear on the rocky end

  of Roqueta Beach, half an hour later, Tony stood looking down at it, a strange little smile on his face.

  "You've never been underwater with an aqualung at all?" he asked thoughtfully.

  "No. I've wanted to go ever since we came to Acapulco but—well, it costs quite a bit. You know this matter of money."

  "Yes," Tony said heavily, his own problem bearing down on him again. "How well I know this matter of money!"

  "I've looked below the surface with just a mask," Peter added in an eager voice. "It's wonderful under there! I suppose going down with a tank of compressed air is about the same, only you don't have to hold your breath."

  "No," Tony said carefully. "It's quite different." He hesitated. Not everyone felt as he did about diving. Better wait and see how Pedro reacted to it, before discussing it.

  "Well," he said briskly. "Now there are a few important things to learn, and then we'll try you out."

  Peter listened intently as Tony explained how to hold the rubber mouthpiece of the air hose, not too lightly, not too loosely; how to swallow his saUva if his ears began to hurt, or press the mask against his face, blowing through his nose, to equalize the pressure on the eardrums.

  "Either way stops the pain in your ears," Tony said, "though we won't be going deep enough today for that to bother you much. Above all, don't get scared. Breathe naturally and lightly. The more deeply you breathe, the more air from the tanks you use up—and we want to

  make it last! One more thing: the rubber fins give your leg stroke so much power, you don't need to use your arms for swimming—just to guide you. And keep your kick slow and steady, like your breathing. That way you don't scare the fish."

  He helped Peter put on the fins, the weighted belt, the rubber-rimmed glass diving mask. Then he slung the aqualung on his back, adjusting the harness and checking the loops of hose which ran from regulator to mouthpiece.

  "It all feels pretty heavy now," Tony said, suppressing a smile as he saw Peter's knees buckle. "But once vou're in the water, you'll see you have no weight at all. Walk out now till the water's up to your shoulders, stick your head under and practice breathing."

  Tony quickly put on his own equipment and joined Peter in the clear blue, sun-dappled water. Before inserting his mouthpiece, he asked, "How's it going?"

  Unable to talk, Peter made a circle of his thumb and forefinger to indicate that it was going fine.

  "Okay, then we'll take a little cruise." Tony tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. "Stick close and if you need help, tap your tank with your fingernails. But I'll be watching you all the time. Take it easy and don't brush against the sea urchins on the rocks. Their spines break off under your skin and sometimes infect. And remember that underwater everything looks bigger than it is and closer to you."

  Peter nodded and the two boys walked out over their heads, bubbles of expelled breath rising to the surface above them.

  Peter was all right, Tony thought, watching him carefully at first. He breathed regularly and used the kick fins gently, propelling himself easily along the sandy bottom and obviously watching for shells, for he picked up a half-buried conch and waved it triumphantly in Tony's direction.

  Tony nodded to show that he saw it. He was gliding along languidly at Peter's side and feeling, as he always did, the miracle and joy of being half fish in the dreamlike wonder of this other world which sometimes seemed to him the only place where he could be completely himself. Walled in silence, without weight or resistance, it was for him the land beyond the looking glass where everything, no matter how trancelike, finally made sense.

  Moving through liquid blue silk, shot with gleams of sunlight, watching the dancing flicker of the brilliant tropical fish, he felt as though this were his own private domain—as though he alone had discovered it and knew all its siren songs. His problems always dropped away magically in this curious evening-blue world with its fantastic landscape of hills and plains and disheveled jewel-colored rocks. On the sandy bottom, red and purple sea fans moved as though in a breeze. Starfish and sea spiders crawled imperceptibly.

  He glanced at Peter, wondering what his blond friend thought about it. Peter was paying no attention to him and Tony could tell nothing from his face, half covered by the mask.

  Anyway, he certainly isn't afraid, Tony thought with satisfaction. There was usually at least one small scare

  during the first few minutes of skin-diving experience: a feeling of claustrophobia, an unwillingness to beHeve that the tanks of compressed air would really work. But Peter looked like a veteran already.

  They drifted gradually deeper and suddenly Tony caught sight of a small octopus playing on a carpet of sand between the rocks. He made a mental note of the location.

  "You stay right there, Senor Octopus," he told it silently. "Don't go wandering off! I'll be back for you before we go."

  Peter was suspended, bemused, above a labyrinth of rocks and Tony propelled himself closer to look. A school of parrot fish was playing hide and seek in a rock castle. The boys watched for some time and then Tony touched Peter's bare shoulder and pointed back, toward the beach. Peter shook his head vehemently and Tony smiled inwardly but he pointed again, more insistently.

  A few minutes later, in shallow water once more, Peter pushed back his mask and let the mouthpiece drop.

  "Why did you want to come back so soon?" he asked angrily. "We were only out there a few minutes. We have an hour—"

  Tony's smile was soft and pleased. "I can see you're going to make a real skin diver, Pedrito. We were under for more than an hour! The air lasted because we didn't go very deep."

  "I don't believe it," Peter said flatly.

  "Well, that tourist over there has a watch. Ask him."

  "It seemed about five minutes." Peter's voice was incredulous.

  "That's the way it is—when you're really caught up in it," Tony answered. "You like it, don't you, Pedro?"

&
nbsp; For a moment Peter didn't answer. There was a musing, faraway look in his blue eyes. He was staring down at the shells in his hand but he wasn't really seeing them.

  When he finally turned to Tony, his voice was strange, almost a hoarse whisper. "I tell you the truth, Tony, I never dreamed there was anything like this in the world! It's hke dreams I've had of flying—floating. I—I don't know how to say it. It's like I was a different person-like I'd always be a different person from now on. It's—" He threw up his hands to indicate the futility of mere words.

  "Welcome to the fraternity, brother," Tony said quietly. "You don't have to try to explain to me. I know! Once you've really felt it, it's one of the few things that seem to matter."

  And maijhe I liave to leave it! he added to himself in sudden anguish, remembering again, and turning his face away so that Peter would not see his eyes.

  "Wait for me," he said gruffly when he had control of himself. "I'm going out after that octopus I saw. It's small but it's something. There isn't time to look for lobster now."

  Without waiting for Peter to answer, he put his mouthpiece in again and sank out of sight. He wasn't sure just how much air there was left in his tank. But remembering the conversation with Uncle Juan, somehow it didn't seem to matter. He meant to make the most of every second, from now on.

  He had almost reached the spot where he had seen

  the octopus when he was suddenly surrounded by clouds of small fish flying past him. And within seconds he knew the reason.

  A six-foot hammerhead shark was cruising straight toward him!

  Tony's instinct was to turn and swim for dear life. Instead he forced himself to freeze motionless, his heart thumping painfully.

  Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

  Tony followed the shark with his eyes as much as he could while it circled around him, but he did not move his body. Never had he seen a hammerhead so close in to the swimming beaches before! But he had had experience with sharks out deeper in the bay and he knew that the best thing to do was to remain perfectly quiet and, above all, not to surface.

  Motion—and particularly the motion of dangling feet —might tempt the shark to pursue and sample a mouthful of leg. But it took a lot of will power not to move! Under the diving mask, Tony could feel perspiration stinging his eyes as the ugly creature circled once—twice —three times—slowly coming nearer. The hammerhead was obviously very curious about this strange, goggled, two-legged fish that kept expelling bubbles into the water.

  The shark was now less than four feet from him, swimming at an angle in order to peer from the eyes

  grotesquely placed at either end of the flat, hammer-shaped head. Tony was wondering how much longer he could stand the motionless suspense when suddenly, with the barest flick of its forked tail, the creature turned and sailed disdainfully away into the deeper blue water.

  Tony drew a long deep breath of the air in his tank and shook his head in groggy relief. The sharks in Aca-pulco waters were not man-eaters and were generally considered harmless, unless there was blood in the water. Nevertheless, even the most fearless skin divers agreed that sharks—any sharks—were unpredictable, and Tony could not remember when he had spent a more acutely imcomfortable three minutes!

  He turned to go back to the beach and then suddenly remembered what he had come for. The little octopus had taken refuge from the shark but Tony could see it now, emerging cautiously from the rocks where it had hidden.

  Might as well get it, since I'm here, he thought.

  Grasping his short spear, he went on down to the bottom. But just as he impaled the octopus, with one swift thrust, he felt as though he were choking and realized that air was no longer coming through his mouthpiece. Flicking on the safety valve at the bottom of the air tank, he drove the spear deeper and turned it upright, in order not to lose the imprisoned wriggler. Then he kicked toward shore, breathing as lightly as possible.

  His knees were a bit rubbery as he waded through the shallow water to the beach where Peter was waiting, looking rather disgruntled.

  "You were gone a long time," he said reproachfully. "So you see there was a lot of air left in your tank—and in mine, too, probably."

  Tony shook his head. "I turned on the reserve supply and even at that, I just made it back," he said, panting. He was glad to have a good excuse for his breathlessness. He didn't intend to spoil Peter's first skin-diving experience with tales of sharks! Another time—if there was another time—he would caution him in a casual way.

  Peter was distracted from his reproaches by the octopus, which was straining madly to get off the gaff.

  "Why don't you kill it and put it out of its misery?" he asked.

  "If we're going to eat it, we want it to stay alive as long as possible," Tony answered reasonably. "Don't worry, Pedro. As soon as we get a boat, I'll take the spear out and you'll see it'll be as lively as ever. An octopus has nine Uves, like a cat!"

  They didn't have to wait long for a ride. Chico, a boy Tony had known from childhood, agreed cheerfully to take them back to the mainland in the boat on which he worked.

  Tony was quiet as the launch chugged away from the island. He had forgotten the shark now and was thinking again about the all-important problem of staying in Aca-pulco.

  It was strange, he mused, how you took things for granted until the threat of losing them sharpened your awareness, and then it all seemed new and you longed for the lost moments when you hadn't really looked and

  felt and smelled and touched, with every part of your senses.

  Had the bay ever been quite this beautiful before? Now, at noon, it was such a dancing, dazzling blue that it hurt the eyes to look at it. He stared through the mouth of the bay to the open Pacific beyond—that flat, infinitely mysterious expanse that went on and on to the very edge of the world. He looked behind him at the emerald island they had just left, its slopes rising steep up from the water to the lighthouse on the peak. He breathed deeply of the faintly salty, faintly fishy air. He gazed ahead at Caleta Beach, its smooth curve of white sand sprinkled with bathers and fringed in the background with coconut palms that waved gently in the breeze.

  He couldn't give it all up! He wouldn't give it up without a mighty struggle!

  "That's quite a haul you have there, Tony—that enormous octopus." Chico's teasing voice broke into his thoughts. "I'd be ashamed to take a baby like that away from its mother!"

  "If I'd seen the mother, I'd have taken her and left the baby." Tony grinned, trying to put his problems out of his mind.

  "They are a strange fish, aren't they?" Peter said wonderingly. He had hardly taken his eyes from it since Tony released it in the launch where it now crawled back and forth, rage and fear making it swell and change color from brilliant yellow to mottled brown and then to yellow again, as it desperately looked for a way back to its home in the blue depths.

  Poor octopus! Tony thought. Aloud he said, "Those suction cups on its tentacles are amazingly strong. Even on a young one like this. Pick it up, Pedro, and you'll see.

  "No thanks." Peter made a face. "I'll take your word for it."

  Chico laughed.

  "Pedro feels sorry for it," Tony said. "Tell you the truth, so do I. I hate to take them, especially the little ones. But Aunt Raquel likes octopus and it will be something, at least, to carry home. There wasn't time to look for a lobster farther out in the rocks."

  "You probably wouldn't have found your lobster, anyway," Chico said. "The truth is, this bay is pretty well fished out—of things like shell fish, I mean—between the commercial skin divers who are doing it for money, and the tourists who are doing it for fun."

  "I'm afraid you're right," Tony said, depressed again. It was what he himself had been thinking during the skin-diving trip. And it wasn't going to help him make the necessary money during these crucial next three months!

  "If a person had a good-sized boat to go up and down the coast," he brooded aloud. "There is everything within a day's run of here—won
derful lobster caves, big oyster beds, all kinds of sea food—"

  "There's not so much close by, any more," Chico objected. "And if you go any distance, you have to have some kind of refrigeration. No, I'll tell you, the only way to make money in Acapulco now is working with the tourists. You know lots of EngUsh, Tony. Maybe we could

  go into business together, eh? Get rich quick like some of these other people!"

  "What kind of business?" Tony asked cautiously.

  "Almost any kind, hombre! Guiding tourists. Taking them for rides—in more ways than one!" He glanced at Peter out of the corner of his eye.

  "You needn't look at him. He's not a tourist." Tony put his hand on Peter's shoulder. "He's an Acapulqueno now. Verdad, Pedro?"

  Peter nodded, grinning.

  "A little capital is all one needs," Chico went on confidently. "They spend money for anything—the gringos and the rich Mexicans from Mexico Gity, too."

  "And the capital?" Tony asked ironically. "You provide it?"

  "Your uncle has money." Ghico's eyes were crafty.

  Tony grunted. "You don't know my uncle! In the first place, he really doesn't have a lot of money. And in the second place, he wouldn't invest a cent in any business that has anything to do with the sea."

  "Well, maybe we could do it without capital." Ghico shrugged as he guided the launch onto the beach. "Gome around, anyway, and we'll talk it over."

  "Okay. And thanks for the ride."

  Tony draped the octopus over his arm like a scarf and he and Peter jumped out, loading themselves down with the skin-diving gear.

  Ghico, too, Tony thought as they walked down the beach to where they could cut over to the skin-diving shop on the coast boulevard. Everyone was trying to figure out ways of getting some of the tourist money!