03 Underwater Adventure (8 page)

‘Yes,’ admitted Skink, ‘but you use a different set of muscles for swimming, and they’re still paralysed.’

‘Perhaps it’s your nerve that is paralysed instead of your muscles,’ suggested Blake.

Skink began to bluster but was interrupted by the appearance of Omo carrying a blazing acetylene torch. It had been adjusted for underwater work. Over the tip was fitted an air sheath through which compressed air would make a bubble extending out of the flame to protect it from the water.

‘Where are you off to?’ Hal asked.

‘The captain wants me to do a little work on the keelson. The metal snapped when we struck one of those coral heads. It needs a bit of welding.’

He dropped over the side. The torch still blazed bravely under the surface. Omo disappeared under the hulL Dr Blake, Hal and Roger put on their masks, fins, aqualungs.-and weighted belts. Each belt already carried a sheath knife and now a shark billy was thrust in beside it Packets of cupric acetate were strapped to the ankles.

‘But we’ll make the other experiments first,’ Blake advised. ‘Don’t open the envelopes until I give the signal.’

They descended the ladder into the lagoon. Blake swam slowly towards the shark, and Hal, armed with the motion picture camera, followed.

Roger unwillingly did as he had been told. He stayed near the ship.

He did not enjoy being treated like a child. He was almost as strong as the other two, and as good a swimmer. Angry and rebellious, he almost hoped something would happen so that he would have to rush in to the rescue. He drew his knife and waited impatiently.

Dr Blake proceeded with his experiments. First he tested the theory that a shark will retreat if you show no fear and swim straight towards him. He started towards the mako. Hal started the camera.

The mako paid no attention to the approaching form until it came within ten feet. Then he moved his tail lazily and fell away to one side.

Again Blake advanced and again the mako moved out of his path - but not so far this time.

Upon the third advance, the mako did not budge. Blake stopped within five feet of the big muzzle.

The evidence seemed to be, at least so far as this shark was concerned, that it would retreat at first before a resolute advance, but that this technique could not be relied upon to scare the beast away.

Blake found himself uncomfortably close to the object of his study. But now would be a good time to test the bubble theory. He took a deep breath, then exhaled sharply and a great volume of bubbles rose from the regulator at the back of his neck.

Perhaps this might have frightened a smaller fish, but the mako was not disturbed. He seemed to be studying Blake as intently as Blake was studying him. Dr Blake began to feel like the specimen instead of the experimenter.

Blake began to move away. The shark immediately followed him. It kept the distance between them at about five feet. This was not enough for comfort, and Blake, becoming a little excited, struck out, splashing hands and feet.

At once the shark began to close in on him. It showed its instinct to attack anything that seemed to be wounded or afraid.

Blake bottled his fear and turned to face the shark, waving his arms menacingly.

At once the shark stopped, but now it was only four feet away.

Blake tested another theory. It was that a shark is more likely to attack at or near the surface because that is where it finds most of its food, helpless or dying fish, garbage from ships. At greater depths it is more wary.

Blake exhaled and sank slowly through the blue-green depths. The shark promptly came down after him but now did not venture so close. It began to circle him at a distance of fifteen or twenty feet.

Suddenly the shark noticed Hal who was still operating the camera from quite near the surface. The great tail gave one mighty thrash and the body shot up towards the big glassy eye of the machine.

Mixed with Hal’s fear was the thrill of photographing an oncoming shark. It loomed bigger and bigger and kept on coming. Hal kept his finger on the button and the film whirred through the camera. Now the great head filled the whole picture. Now a cave yawned as the monster opened its savage mouth, revealing rows of sharp white shovels.

With all his strength Hal banged the heavy metal-encased camera against the brute’s nose.

Promptly it changed course, sliding past him and scraping the skin from his shoulder with its sandpaper hide.

Hal turned to face another attack, but now he was joined by Blake who tested the merits of his shark billy by bringing it down with a resounding whack on the already bruised nose of the mako.

The shark swam away but immediately returned in a more deadly mood than ever.

Roger could not stay on the sidelines any longer. He swam in with his knife bared. He disregarded Hal’s violent gestures warning him to stay out of range.

The shark saw him and came for him, its open mouth as big as a barrel. At the last moment, Roger twisted to one side and gripped the right pectoral fin. Hanging on

to it, he was dragged along by the big fish. He sank his knife into the white underbelly. Red blood gushed forth.

Blake had clutched the other pectoral fin and his knife was sinking deep and often into the great carcass. Hal knew his duty as a photographer and kept the camera whirring. This was a picture of pictures.

The smell of the blood spreading through the water brought a sudden rush of new visitors. Sharks appeared from nowhere, from everywhere, ravenous beasts, fearless with blood lust.

Blake and Roger fell away from the bleeding mako and left it to the furious attacks of its brother sharks. The pink water boiled with the thrashing of their great tails.

All would have been well if the savage creatures had kept their attention on the wounded mako, but in their fury they were ready to attack and devour anything. They lunged at the swimmers who wielded their shark billies and knives with deadly effect.

Blake ripped open the envelope on his ankle and signalled to the others to do the same. The cupric acetate spread a yellow tinge to join the pink of the blood-stained sea.

However much this repellent might have deterred a shark under normal circumstances, it had no effect whatever upon this bloodthirsty mob. The big fish were at too high a pitch of excitement to be discouraged by an unpleasant smell.

The three swimmers moved back cautiously towards the ship, fighting a rearguard action against the demented beasts. Here were mako sharks, blue sharks, white sharks and hammerheads, all of them intent on snapping up these human morsels floating in the pink sea.

Reaching the foot of the ladder, Blake seized Roger and made him go up first. But when nothing of Roger was left in the water except his feet, a mako lunged at those white fishlike things with such determination that Roger had to drop back into the sea to defend himself.

Above, leaning over the rail of the Lively Lady, was the laughing face of Skink. He was enjoying this spectacle enormously. Blake called to him to come down and help, but he blithely declined the invitation. No spectator ever enjoyed seeing the Christians thrown to the lions in a Roman arena more than Skink delighted in the death struggle of his three companions.

But he sang a different tune when a mako, making one of those high jumps for which the mako are famous, sprang a full fifteen feet into the air and came crashing down on the rail, smashing it to bits. The big body slid across the deck, scraping off generous portions of Skink’s hide as it passed.

This was enough to remove any lingering numbness that might have remained in Skink’s leg. He jumped like a jack-rabbit for the ratlines and swarmed up to the crow’s nest. In this retreat he crouched, shivering lest one of the terrible acrobats of the sea might reach him even here.

Blake and Hal made another attempt to hoist Roger up the ladder, but again the sharks destroyed their plan. Roger dropped back into the sea.

The situation had become desperate. All three swimmers had reached the limit of their strength and of their wits. The end could not be far off, and Hal found himself regretting that the wonderful film in the camera would sink to the bottom of the lagoon where no audience would ever view it.

Roger sank some distance to a point where, looking up, he happened to see Omo working on the far side of the hull with his acetylene torch, quite unaware of the battle being fought on the other side of the ship.

With powerful strokes Roger shot up to Omo’s side and snatched the acetylene torch from the hands of the astonished crewman. Holding the flame-spitting machine, he swam under the keelson and came up into the churning mob of sharks.

Like King Arthur with the burning sword Excalibur, Roger attacked his enemies. The flame with its temperature of 3,600 degrees, a flame that could cut steel, was too much even for a blood-maddened shark.

A big white shark limped away with a hole as big as a tub burned in the side of its head. In the time that it would take to open its mouth, a blue shark lost its lower jaw. The knight of the Round Table next took on a hammerhead which stumbled away with one of its hammers gone.

Here, there, up and down, flashed the deadly flame. The berserk fish came back to their senses, forgot about blood, forgot about everything except that scorching dagger, and fled for their lives in all directions.

Mute with astonishment, Blake and Hal waited at the foot of the ladder. There was not a shark in sight. Roger took the torch back to Omo, then joined them at the ladder. They climbed to the deck. The rail was smashed on both beams, where the leaping shark had landed and where it had slid off again into the sea. From the crow’s-nest peered down the frightened face of Skink.

The three fighters dropped wearily to the deck. Hal set the camera down tenderly. In that camera was the greatest picture of a shark battle ever filmed.

Blake was looking at Roger as if he had never seen him before. ‘My boy,’ he said, ‘I want to apologize for putting you on the sidelines. Why, you’re a better man than any of us. Your wit saved us from a very messy death.’

Roger glowed under the chief’s praise. He felt he had grown up. No longer would they call him a kid and push him off to one side when there was fun afoot. Now he belonged.

‘Today we’ll try deep-sea diving,’ Blake announced on the following morning. ‘We want to get some colour pictures of life a quarter mile down.’

He smiled at the wide-eyed surprise caused by his words.

‘You are aware, I hope,’ said Skink scornfully, ‘that the aqualung cannot be used at a depth of more than three or four hundred feet.’

‘Quite aware. We won’t use aqualungs. We’ll use the Iron Man.’

Blake gave orders to Captain Ike and Omo, who removed the hatch and dropped a steel cable with a hook at the end from the tip of the cargo boom. Then the motor winch was started, the cable began to wind on to the drum, and up out of the hold rose a grotesque monster of steel and glass.

It had a huge head with four eyes, and a round body that reminded one of the belly of a very fat Santa Qaus. The creature had no legs. But it had two steel arms, five feet long, and at the end of each arm were two steel fingers.

The monster was swung over and down to the deck. It seemed to be almost too much for the planking which sank a little under its weight.

‘It weighs nearly two tons,’ Blake said. ‘The walls are solid steel, two inches thick.’

‘Why do they have to be so thick?’ Roger inquired.

‘To withstand the tremendous pressure at great depths.’

Hal studied the monster with intense interest. ‘Would you call it a diving bell?’

That’s right. But the very newest kind. The diving bell has a long history. Even the Greeks had a primitive one. But the machine had to wait until this century to become really efficient. You may have heard of William Beebe’s descents in the bathysphere, and Otis Barton’s benthoscope, and Professor Piccard’s bathyscope.

‘But the trouble with all these devices was that they were just observation chambers. You could get in and go down and look out through the windows, but that was all. If you saw something you wanted you couldn’t reach out and pick it up. If you found a sunken wreck there was nothing you could do about it except observe it through the windows.

‘Several attempts were made to fit diving bells with arms and legs but they weren’t too successful. A very clever robot invented by a man named Romano was used by Lieutenant Rieseberg in his search for sunken treasure. With its help he was able to bring up treasure from old wrecks. The machine you see before you is supposed to be the best of all these outfits, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed until we’ve tried it.’

Hal was examining the steel fingers. They were long and sharp-pointed like the claws of a great bird. ‘How do the arms operate?’

‘By electricity. There is a switchboard inside for moving the arms in any direction and for working the claws. Those claws operate like a pair of pincers. They can be brought together so delicately that they will pick up a small coin. Once you get used to them you can do wonders with them. I saw a demonstration in which an expert made the Iron Man’s fingers tie a knot in a cable. And although they can do delicate jobs’ the arms and fingers are very powerful. They can move great beams, or hatches, or trunks full of metal. They are at least twenty times as strong as the strongest human arms.’

Blake went around behind the monster and opened a heavy steel trapdoor, revealing a round hole about twenty inches across.

‘Rather a tight fit, isn’t it?’ wondered Hal.

‘Yes, but you can get through if you slip one shoulder in before the other.’

They peered into the dim interior. In the head were the four round glass windows that, from the outside, looked like four eyes. The occupant would not be able to see up or down, but he could see out in four directions. There was room in this upper dome not only for a man’s head but for a camera, if he wished to take pictures through the windows.

In the lower dome Dr Blake pointed out the switchboard by which the arms and fingers were controlled, other switches for spotlights to illuminate the dark ocean depths, cylinders that supplied air much on the principle of the aqualung, and the telephone by which the diver could keep constantly in touch with his friends on the ship above. There was even a small electric heater.