02 South Sea Adventure

by Willard Price

  ‘With luck,’ he said, ‘we could slide downhill all the way to Ponape.’

  ‘Why do they call this the downhill run?’ asked Hal.

  ‘Because we’re in the path of the trades. That doesn’t mean much to a steamer but it’s everything to a sailing ship. With the trade winds behind us we’ll make fast time. O’ course here in the horse latitudes they’re a bit temperamental, but when we get past Hawaii they ought to be mighty steady - barring accidents.’

  ‘What accidents?’

  ‘Hurricanes. They can spoil the best of plans.’

  ‘Is this the season for them?’

  ‘It is. But no telling. We might be lucky. Anyway,’ and he gave Hal a sharp glance, ‘what you’re after is worth the trouble.’

  Hal was suddenly suspicious. Was the captain fishing for

  information? Or did he already know more than he was supposed to know? He had been told only that they were after marine specimens. No mention had been made of pearls.

  Hal turned away and walked the deck. The buoyant exhilaration he had felt as the ship raced before the wind was dulled by worry.

  He had almost ceased to think of the menace that had threatened the expedition before it left home. There had been no sign that anyone had shadowed them at the airfield or on the plane or during the days in San Francisco. When they sailed out into the great freedom of the Pacific he felt that all evil plots had been left behind and that there was nothing ahead but delightful adventure.

  Now he wondered about Captain Ike. He wondered about the rough fellow named Crab. He wondered about Omo - being from the South Seas, might he not have picked up some information about the professor’s experiment?

  ‘What’s eating you?’ demanded Roger, noting his brother’s worried look.

  Hal laughed. He wouldn’t worry Roger with his ill-founded fears. ‘Just wondering if we were going to have a change in the weather. See that cloud?’

  ‘It looks as if it meant business,’ said Roger, looking up at the black cloud passing above. Presently a few drops fell.

  ‘Rain!’ exclaimed Hal. ‘That means a bath to me. Here goes to get off some of that sweaty dirt I put on in the city.’

  He dashed down into the cabin and came up a few moments later stripped naked, with a cake of soap in his hand.

  As the raindrops wet his skin he vigorously soaped himself all over until he was covered with a white lather from head to foot. He waited for the rain to increase in volume and wash him clean.

  Instead, the rain ceased abruptly. The black cloud passed over and not another drop was squeezed out of it Hal stood like a pillar of soap, waiting patiently, and considerably embarrassed under the gaze of the captain and crew. He consoled himself with the thought that there were no ladies on board and none within dozens of miles.

  But his mischievous younger brother, much amused, had a sudden flash of inspiration. He went down to the storeroom and opened the slop chest. He had already seen a woman’s dress and hat in this chest and when he had asked about them the captain had explained that his wife sometimes accompanied him on his voyages.

  Roger hastily slipped the dress on oyer his shirt and slacks. It was big enough for a couple of boys his size. The hat was fortunately very large and droopy, effectively concealing most of his face.

  Hal knew that Captain Flint’s wife often went along but it had been distinctly understood that this time she would stay home. So he was completely stunned when he saw a female figure rise from the cabin companionway and step out on deck.

  He looked for a place of hiding and made a move to get behind the mainmast. At the same moment the lady saw him and the sight was too much for her delicate sensibilities. She screamed to high heaven and fell face downward on the deck.

  The poor soul, she had fainted! She might even have killed herself striking her head on the deck. Hal forgot his embarrassment. He ran to her aid, soapsuds flying. He lifted the limp form. He pushed back the big hat and looked into the face of Roger who burst into a mighty guffaw in which he was joined by the captain and Crab.

  Laughing always made Roger weak. Hal took advantage of that weakness. He draped his impish brother over his soapy knee and administered a sound spanking. Roger quit laughing. Hal might have known that that

  was a sign of more mischief. Only a low rail stood between the deck and the sea. Roger pretended not to have a muscle in his body. But his drooping hands were close to Hal’s foot.

  Suddenly he clutched the foot, reared up, and heaved his brother into the ocean.

  ‘Enough of that nonsense,’ bawled the captain as he threw the wheel hard over and smartly brought the ship about. He crawled up on the starboard tack, close-hauled, to where Hal, now quite unsoaped, lazily splashed in the water. As the ship bore up to him, Hal reached for the bobstay that held the bowsprit to the stem, and clambered aboard.

  His skin tingled with the shock of the cold water. ‘Thanks a million, Roger,’ he said. ‘That was grand.’

  He went down and dressed. The fun with Roger and the cold bath that had ended it had restored his high spirits. If there was any menace waiting at the end of the downhill run he felt he would be a match for it.

  Chapter 4

  Mysteries of the deep

  It was night on deck and there was no lantern near enough to read by. And yet Hal was reading.

  His only light was a fish!

  Swimming about the small tank between the two boys, it threw out a stronger glow than that of a forty-watt bulb.

  ‘Do you find it in the manual?’ asked Roger.

  ‘Yes, here it is. A lantern fish. A good name for it!’

  The fish has a row of lights along each side, like the lighted portholes of a steamer. Then there were other lights thickly sprinkled over the back. All these lights burned continuously. But most startling were the tail lights which flashed on and off.

  Hal had just spent an hour out ahead of the ship on the tip end of the bowsprit. Standing in the pulpit and hanging onto the curved rail which half-surrounded it, he had watched the scudding sea a few feet below him. When he saw anything interesting, his hand net flashed down and up. It was in one of these strikes that he had caught the lantern fish.

  ‘What do you suppose it wants with all those lights?’ asked Roger.

  ‘Well,’ explained Hal, ‘it’s a deep-sea fish. It comes to the surface only at night. During the day it lives away down where it is always dark, night and day. So it needs lanterns to find its way about.’ ‘But the sun can shine through water,’ objected Roger.

  ‘The sunlight only goes down a thousand feet or so. Below that, if you did any deep-sea diving, you would need a lamp. On down to the bottom, a distance of a mile to six miles, there is total darkness - or would be if the fish didn’t carry lanterns.’

  ‘But what’s the idea of those flashing tail lights?’

  ‘Probably to blind enemies. Just as you would be blinded if I flashed an electric torch in your eyes. When I turned it off you wouldn’t be able to see me and I could escape.’

  ‘Pretty smart fish,’ marvelled Roger.

  Every day a net was towed behind the ship. Sometimes it was a surface net, sometimes a deep-sea trawl which collected specimens from a depth of a quarter-mile or more.

  These denizens of the deep Hal had put together in a small aquarium.

  ‘Let’s put the lantern fish in with his friends,’ suggested Roger.

  Hal scooped it up with a small net and transferred it to the deep-sea tank.

  Immediately there was wild commotion. The lantern fish was pursued by a slightly larger fish which was also sprinkled with lights. Even its fins were illuminated. From its chin dangled brilliantly lighted whiskers.

  ‘Its name is star-eater,’ said Hal.

  ‘It sure looks as if it had eaten plenty of stars,’ said Roger, following the movements of the star-spangled fish, ‘and it will eat some more if it can get that lantern fish.’

  Suddenly the lantern fish flashed its blinding ta
il lights. The confused star-eater stopped and its quarry escaped to hide in a far corner of the tank.

  Some of the fish gave out a green light, some yellow, some red. One carried what looked like a small electric bulb suspended in front of its face.

  But one had no lights. Hal found its description in his manual. It was blind, therefore it could not use lights to see where it was going. Instead, it was like a blind man walking down the street and tapping with his cane ahead of him. Only in this case there were about twenty canes - long feelers that spread out in every direction like reaching fingers. With these the fish could avoid bumping into unpleasant neighbours, and find its food.

  But some of the specimens were not in the manual. Hal wrote descriptions of these and made careful drawings. Perhaps they were new to science. He was their discoverer. Some of them might be named after him.

  It seemed a little absurd to Hal and Roger that they should be finding things unknown to the scientists.

  ‘But it could be.’ said Hal. ‘Last year the Smithsonian Institution made a study of fish near the Bikini atoll. Of four hundred and eighty-one species studied, seventy-nine were new. That’s one out of every six. If the same proportion holds here, one out of every six kinds of fish in that tank has never been named or described or had its picture taken until tonight.’

  Wham! Something hit the lower staysail just over Hal’s head, then fell to the deck. Wham! Wham! Two more.

  ‘Flying-fish!’ cried Hal. The tank of luminous fish cast a glow on the staysail. Flying-fish, attracted by the light, were flying on board.

  I’ll be catcher!’ said Roger, and planted himself in front of the sail. This was as good as baseball. A dark object came hurtling towards him. He caught it neatly and passed it to Omo who had come to gather up the fish. They would be served at breakfast. Flying-fish make fine eating.

  Roger caught another, and another. Then a larger object came speeding towards him. It missed his hands and struck him a terrific thump in the stomach. It was as if he had been hit with a sledgehammer. He doubled up, dropped to the deck, and lay still. Hal hastily covered the luminous tank so that no more visitors would be attracted. He leaned over Roger who was beginning to mutter weakly, ‘What hit me?’

  Planted against Roger’s stomach Hal found something that felt like a large rock covered with razor-sharp ridges. He played his torch on it and saw a fish that looked something like a knight in full armour. ‘It’s a flying gurnard!’ he said. ‘You might have been

  killed.’ He remembered stories of sailors at the wheel who had been hit between the eyes by these flying cannonballs and knocked senseless. The knifelike scales had cut through Roger’s shirt and drawn blood.

  Hal put the flying gurnard into a tank by itself and treated his brother’s wounds. When the boy was able to stand they both went to inspect the new catch.

  Hal was delighted. ‘Mr Bassin will be tickled to get this,’ he said. ‘It’s a circus all by itself. It can swim, it can fly, and it can even walk. Look at it now.’

  Sure enough the gurnard was walking about on the bottom of the tank. Two of its fins served as legs. It strolled for a while, then broke into a sudden trot. It ran to a bit of seaweed, turned it over using its fin as a hand, plucked a morsel from under it, and popped it into its mouth.

  Roger laughed, holding his hand over his sore stomach. ‘What a performer! Mr Bassin will love it. Until it jumps out of the pool and hits the big chief in the pit of the stomach.’ He patted his bruised midriff. ‘Not that I wish the gentleman any harm but - I’d like to be there when it happens.’

  Chapter 5

  The giant sea bat

  ‘Bats !’ cried Roger the next morning from his perch in the crow’s-nest. ‘I see bats as big as barn doors.’

  That sounded silly even to Roger. Bats don’t swim. And bats are never as big as barn doors. And yet these were certainly that big and they were swimming along the surface, their great black wings rising and falling.

  Roger was official announcer. He spent much of every day in the crow’s-nest, watching the sea. His sharp eyes had spotted many interesting specimens. When he saw anything he could call out and the ship would change course if necessary to come up with it. If it proved to be something that Hal wanted, an effort would be made to net it and add it to the collection.

  The captain put the wheel over a spoke or two and headed for the school of black, flapping monsters. Hal came tumbling up from below with a pair of binoculars. He could not believe what he saw through them.

  ‘What are they?’ he asked Captain Ike.

  ‘Sea bats. Some call ‘em devilfish.’

  It came back to Hal that this was one of the specimens his father’s important client especially wanted. It was a manta, a giant ray.

  How could they hope to capture one? And would the biggest tank be big enough to hold it?

  The mantas were going around in circles, evidently pursuing small fish. As the Lively Lady came nearer, all on board could plainly see what went on. They fixed their attention especially on one monster close by. It was turning in a tight circle, one wing above the water and the other wing under. It was fully twenty feet across from wing-tip to wing-tip. It was about eighteen feet long from mouth to tail.

  It was chasing a school of mullet.

  On each side of its mouth was a great flat flipper or arm. These arms spread out, gathered in fish, and shovelled them into the monster’s mouth.

  And what a mouth! It was four feet wide, big enough to swallow two men at one gulp.

  But Hal knew that the giant ray was not a man-eater. It preferred fish.

  It was extremely dangerous just the same. It had been known to leap into the air and bring its two-ton weight down upon a small boat, smashing the boat to kindling wood and killing its occupants. Its whiplike tail could cut like a knife. Sometimes instead of falling upon a boat the giant ray would come up beneath it, lifting it clear out of the water and then upsetting it. It might then thrash about among the swimmers, killing or maiming them.

  It had no fear of man. Perhaps it was too stupid to fear him, perhaps it was too confident of its own great strength.

  It would sometimes accompany a boat for miles, swimming under it and around it and leaping over it If the boatmen beat it with their oars, it did not seem to mind. The blows did not disturb it any more than a tap on the ribs would hurt a man.

  Once a man had fallen overboard into the great open mouth of the devilfish. The creature evidently didn’t like the taste and disgustedly spat him out. The man was unhurt except for a bad scratching from the monster’s lower teeth. The captain brought the ship up into the wind and crawled slowly into the middle of the school. There the ship came to a standstill, sails flapping idly. On every side huge black wings were lifting and dropping. Mantas evidently liked company. They usually travelled in packs. Hal could count twenty-eight of them in this school.

  Captain Ike grinned at Hal who looked the picture of bewilderment. ‘Well, here we are. What do you want to do?’ 1 want to get one of those things alive.’ The captain snorted. ‘You’ll never do that, son. We could get one of them dead, but not alive. We could harpoon one.’

  ‘That won’t do,’ said Hal. Then he came out of his trance and began to issue orders. ‘Roger and Omo, go below and get the big net. Crab, launch the dinghy. Captain, keep her in stays - we’ll be here for some time.’

  Captain Ike began to show real worry, ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘Going to get in the way of that big fellow. We’ll stretch the net between the dinghy and the ship so he’ll run into it.’

  ‘You crazy fool…’ began the captain, but Hal was not listening.

  One lead of the heavy net was made fast to the capstan on the deck of the Lively Lady. The net was dropped into the dinghy and Hal, Roger, and Omo let themselves down into the small boat. They rowed away from the ship, letting out the net as they went.

  When the net was all out the dinghy was about fifty feet from the ship. The lead o
f the net was made fast to the mooring bitts in the dinghy.

  The circle that the big fellow was making should bring him right into the net. Just what would happen then, nobody dared guess.

  Around came the sea bat. He ignored the boat. He looked far larger and more terrifying than he had from the deck of the ship. The upper edge of the net projected from the water.

  The devilfish seemed to sense that there was some obstruction ahead of him. But instead of slowing down or swimming to one side he came faster and faster until he was going like a speedboat.

  Then he suddenly came clear of the water and soared through the air. He crossed ten feet above the net. He looked like a flying barn door carried away by a cyclone. He reminded Hal of a Northrop flying wing. Then he hit the water on the other side of the net with a sound like the report of a five-inch naval gun.

  He came ploughing around again in another circle. His excitement seemed to be transferred to the other mantas and they began to leap out of the water, coming down again with terrific smacks. Some of them turned complete somersaults, their white bellies gleaming in the sun.

  Curiosity was bringing them closer to the small boat.

  ‘They’re ganging up on us,’ cried Roger. Hal began to believe the captain was right. Only a crazy fool could have put himself and two companions in the way of twenty-eight devilfish.

  This time it was another manta that approached the net Instead of leaping over it, it turned sharply away from it and towards the boat. Suddenly finding the boat in its way, it leaped into the air.

  The boys were suddenly cut off from the sunshine by the flying cloud. Hal crouched low, fearing the terrible crushing smash of the monster’s weight. Roger had a better idea and slipped under a thwart. Omo, belonging to a race that accepts life or death calmly, sat smiling. As the devilfish came down with a terrific crack on the other side of the boat only its razor tail failed to clear the boat and cut a deep gash in the gunwale.