12 Cannibal Adventure

by Willard Price

  The artist himself was painted in gorgeous colours from head to foot.

  The boys watched as the artist prepared his colours. The nearest paint shop was a thousand miles away, The colours must be obtained from natural sources. A vivid red was made from the seed pods of a certain bush. White was produced from limestone. Yellow came from a certain clay. To make black, a boy chewed pieces of charcoal mixed with dark green leaves until a smooth black slime was produced which lie spat into a stone bowl. The brushes used by the artist were feathers of the emu.

  The result was dazzling. The face of each skull was painted like the face of a New Guinea warrior going forth to battle. To supply teeth to the open mouths, sharks’ teeth were used. Each black eye-socket was plugged with a shining cowrie shell. That gave the face a weird, staring look that should frighten any enemy. Eyebrows were glued on. They were really the legs of black widow spiders.

  Then came the feeding of the spirits who were about to make the long journey to a strange land. The natives had no idea of what the villages called America and Europe were like, except that the people living there were so weak that they had to wear clothes to keep themselves warm, and their skin was a sickly white instead of a good healthy brown. The spirits would find no good food there, so before they left they must be filled up with the best of food, and great heaps of dead beetles, spiders, scorpions, wasps, slugs, snails and other such dainties were placed before the skulls. The spirits were given time to absorb the souls of these foods, and then the villagers gorged themselves on what was left.

  Then came the farewell dance. The faces of all the dancers were painted as the skulls had been, but from their hair rose the glorious plumes of birds of paradise to a height of two or three feet The huge drum of the village beat out the rhythm of the dance, whistles of reeds gave out piercing screams, a sort of guitar with strings made of crocodile hide instead of catgut twanged mournfully, and everybody shouted at the top of his lungs. It was a terrific din and Hal thought the spirits of his skulls would be delighted to get away from it and never come back.

  The festivities were concluded by drinking vast quantities of the fermented juices of the coconut palm - not the nut, which contained only water, but the flower stalks, which when cut yielded a white, sticky milk that became a strong intoxicant after a day or two in the air.

  So the weary merrymakers went to their homes, except for a few men who helped transfer the skulls and the rock leg-bone to the ship.

  Chapter 27

  Mysteries of the deep

  So the palefaces said goodbye to their brown friends and sailed down the river to the sea to gather the specimens that could be found only in deep water.

  Donning their scuba gear, which consisted of tanks, masks, weighted belts and flippers, the boys sank into the warm waters of the Arafura Sea.

  They were amazed to see dimly through the foggy water two other divers. They did not appear to have tanks on their backs, they wore no masks, and instead of two flippers each was equipped with only one broad fin. They had hands, but if they had feet they could not be seen. They were not hunched down like animals, they stood upright. But if they were humans, they were giants, for they stood ten feet tall.

  Roger had never seen anything like them, but Hal as a more experienced naturalist guessed what they were. Far back in the fifteenth century sailors who had seen this creature rise head and shoulders above the waves, holding a baby in its arms, had taken it to be a mermaid. But if they had been able to see the part under water they might have decided that it was much too fat and heavy to be a very enticing mermaid. It weighed at least a ton. And on its upper lip it wore a moustache which you would hardly expect on a beautiful maiden. Besides, it had no long golden hair such as was usually supposed to adorn the maid of the sea.

  And yet, the baby held in its arms made it look very human. And it could not be a fish, for a fish could not breathe with its head out of water. So for many hundreds of years stories went around about beautiful ladies called sirens who could live with equal ease above water and below, and who probably had palaces on the sea bottom where they and the kings of the sea lived in luxury.

  As the boys came closer they could see that although they both had moustaches the male was taller than the female and had one pair of teeth ten inches long. The mother was holding the baby. The father went up to eat some of the algae floating near the surface. When he came down again, his wife handed him the baby and she took her turn at eating. When below water their nostrils were tightly closed. But when they put their heads out into the air their nostrils opened and they breathed deeply. They appeared to wear glasses. Above water, they took off their glasses. Below, they put them on. They were really transparent glasslike eyelids that, beneath the surface, protected the eyes from the salt water and enabled the animal to see well, just as a diver sees better if his eyes are protected by a mask.

  Hal started to swim up and beckoned to Roger to follow. When they had their heads out of water they could talk.

  ‘What in the world are they?’ Roger asked.

  ‘Dugongs,’ Hal said, ‘usually called sea cows. Dad wanted us to get one.’

  ‘They ought to be easy to take,’ said Roger. ‘They don’t seem a bit afraid of us.’

  ‘They probably take us for two more sea cows.’

  ‘Dolphins and whales have to come up to breathe. Are these in the same family?’

  ‘No. Strangely enough, their nearest cousin is the elephant. Ages ago, they lived on land with the elephants. Both they and the elephants like to go bathing and it seems that the sea cows became so fond of it that they decided to bathe all the time. So during the thousands of years since then their feet have disappeared and their arms have become flippers. But they are still enough like arms so that they can hold their babies or anything else they wish to carry about. They have only one baby at a time and they love it to death. If the baby is taken away from them they will follow it and weep great tears until they get it back.

  If we can grab the baby and take it to the ship the parents will certainly follow and then perhaps we can capture one of them and hoist it aboard.’

  ‘I never heard of anything so cruel,’ Roger said.

  ‘Why cruel?’

  ‘If they love the youngster as much as you say they do, it would be cruel to break up the family.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Hal admitted. ‘We’ll have to take all of them, or none.’

  But this was not so easily done. The baby was carefully guarded by its parents. The boys had to wait half an hour before the youngster was set down so that it could eat some of the sea grass on the ocean floor. When the mother and father turned away for a moment, Hal seized the little one and swam towards the surface. He was immediately followed by both anxious parents. Reaching the ship’s side, Hal shouted to Captain Ted to operate the crane.

  ‘I’ve got some heavy hoisting for you to do.’

  ‘What now?’ complained Ted. ‘We have enough already on board to sink the ship.’

  ‘Just two tons more,’ Hal said.

  Muttering his displeasure, the captain let down the loop. Hal fitted the baby into it and drew it tight.

  ‘Haul away,’ he said.

  When this small bit of cargo appeared above the gunwale the surprised captain exclaimed, ‘That’s the smallest two tons I ever saw.’

  ‘More to come,’ Hal said.

  The two tons crowded close, looking up towards the rail where their infant had disappeared. Great tears were rolling down their cheeks. No wonder they had been called ‘the weeping mermaids’. They were mild, peaceable animals, and wanted no trouble. But Hal was careful to keep out of the way of the male’s sharp tusks. He was so tightly squeezed between the two heavyweights that he could scarcely breathe.

  He slipped the noose down over the male’s head and drew it tight just under the arms, ‘Up!’ he shouted, and up went papa. Then mama went up and the happy family was reunited.

  Not too happy at first, for they found th
emselves in a very strange world. They were dropped into a tank of water where there was no sea grass nor any algae. Each of the two adults required a hundred pounds of such stuff a day. So the boys started at once gathering such food and sending it aboard in buckets let down by the captain.

  The boys went back to the depths. This time they descended into a gorge two hundred feet deep. It took some stiff swimming to get to the bottom against the pressure of the water and when they got there Roger was tired out. The over-exertion gave him an experience that he would never forget.

  He was overcome by nitrogen narcosis. It is also called rapture of the deeps. The immediate effect is to make the diver feel very happy. He is carefree. Nothing matters. He is in a fairyland of his own imagination.

  Roger saw beautiful dancing figures all about him. He knew they weren’t there, but there they were. He tried to catch some of them, but they kept just beyond his reach. Then he saw that they were not pretty girls, but snakes dancing on their tails. No, they were sea cows, but had no heads.

  He knew something was wrong with him. He decided to go up to the surface and started to swim. Instead of going up, he really sat on the bottom kicking his legs and waving his arms. He felt he was getting closer and closer to the top. Instead, he started to scrabble along the bottom. His skin felt tight. There was a bitter taste in his mouth. He wanted to take out his mouthpiece so that he would not breathe the air from his tank but would inhale the beautiful clean sea.

  He still thought he was going up but a great white manta as big as a barn door got in his way. It wasn’t a manta, it was the ceiling in his own home. The room was full of water and the ceiling prevented him from getting out of it.

  He would cut a hole in it and he took his knife out of the sheath. When he dug it into the ceiling there was no ceiling. He tried to put his knife back in the sheath but it wouldn’t go in - so he threw it away. What good was a knife that wouldn’t go back into the sheath? And it wouldn’t cut ceilings either.

  He could see miles and miles through the water. He could see Eilanden village and Pavo and Pug. He spoke to them but they did not answer.

  Then he saw a whole sea full of flippers. Rubber flippers, going up and down, up and down. It was Hal, but he had no head and no feet |j only flippers, thousands of them.

  He would lie down and go to sleep. He was in his bunk now, and it was so comfortable. But somebody was pulling him out of the bunk. Why couldn’t he let him sleep? The breathing tube dropped out of his mouth.

  Somebody jammed it in again and hauled him up to a higher level. The narcosis gradually evaporated. All the hell and heaven of it disappeared, the phantom figures vanished and there was nothing left but Hal gripping his arm and shaking him to restore full consciousness. He should be grateful to Hal, yet he was sorry to leave that weird, wild world below.

  ‘How do you feel now?’ ‘Fine and fit. Let’s go down again.’ ‘Dinner first, then a night dive. Things happen down there at night that never happen during the day/

  ‘You were pretty far gone,’ Hal said when he got Roger back on the deck of the Flying Cloud.

  ‘Well,’ Roger said, ‘it was a sort of groovy place to go to, but I’m glad to get back.’

  ‘You very nearly didn’t get back. When I got there you probably thought you were swimming but you were actually just digging in the sand as if you expected to find gold. You had dropped the breathing tube from your mouth and in a few seconds more your lungs would have filled up with water and nothing would have been left for you but a decent burial.’

  ‘Glad you got to me in time,’ Roger said.

  Chapter 28

  Night under water

  As they sank into the sea they entered a world of light, not dark. They had flashlights but did not use them. The sea was full of stars. They could imagine themselves swimming in the midst of the Milky Way.

  The stars were of all colours. Red, yellow, green, blue, lavender. The phosphorescent fish lit up one another. A lantern fish went by, a row of lights down each side like the portholes of a ship. Shrimps threw out bright flames. Jellyfish glowed softly. Venus’s girdles were outlined as with neon tubes. The hatchetfish went equipped with indirect lighting. The ‘deep sea dragon’ was conspicuous, with its rows of green and blue lights. The greybeard sported illuminated whiskers. Squids peered out of eyes ringed with lights, and more lights dotted their tentacles. Toadfish showed no lights when their huge mouths were shut; but when they were open a string of lights like a necklace of pearls appeared along the base of the teeth.

  All these creatures lived far down in regions of total darkness during the day - hence their need of lights. Why some of the lights were white, some yellow, some red, some blue, some green, science had not explained.

  One carried what looked like a small electric bulb suspended from a sort of fishing pole in front of its face. This attracted a small fish, then the light was jerked out of the way, and the little fish found itself between the jaws of the fisherman.

  Most astonishing were the sounds. One thinks of the undersea world as ‘the silent world’, but it was full of sounds, especially when all the night feeders were on the warpath.

  The boys heard mysterious grunts, crunches, groans, croaks and squeals but couldn’t take the time to investigate

  their sources. A parrotfish was chewing coral with a very distinct crunching noise. The grunt grunted, the croaker croaked, the pigfish squealed, the schoolmaster scolded, the drumfish drummed, the porpoise snorted, the singing fish made cricket-like sounds, the oldwife chirped and chattered.

  Roger nudged Hal and pointed up. Above them was a sort of white ceiling as if someone were playing a great light down into the sea.

  Hal realized that the light came from a moonfish. It was perfectly round, a full ten feet in diameter, and flat as a pancake. Its name was due to the fact that it was round and glowed like the moon.

  It really appeared to be nothing but a head. When it was young it had possessed a tail but dropped it as a tadpole does. The apparent head actually contained the stomach and other organs. On the edge of the pancake were two small eyes. Tiny, almost invisible fins along the edge propelled the ton weight of the huge fish slowly through the water.

  A humpback whale went by, singing. For many years it had been known that whales produce sounds. Scientists of the Bronx Zoo had recorded them and found them remarkably musical. Songs of most birds last only a few seconds. But those of the whales may go on from seven minutes to half an hour. One musician who heard the record was so pleased with it that he composed a concerto for whale and orchestra and it was performed by the New York Philharmonic. From hundreds of hours of whale recordings the best were selected for a stereo album called ‘The Song of the Whale’.

  All the little coral animals which build the great coral reefs of the world but cannot be seen by day were out of their holes now waving their antennae, catching and swallowing bits of animal life even smaller than they were. But Hal and Roger were sorry to see a murderer going about over the reef killing the coral builders. The murderer was the crown-of-thorns, a giant starfish that had already turned much of the coral of the Great Barrier Reef into a dead desert. The crown-of-thorns had a peculiar way of dining. It spread itself over dozens of the tiny coral animals, then actually turned its stomach inside out and absorbed and digested the whole lot before drawing its stomach back into its body. This pest was multiplying fast and unless some way was found to fight it it would destroy all the beautiful coral reefs of the world.

  Hal had heard that a good enemy of the crown-of-thorns was the triton, a shellfish with a shell so beautiful that it is worth £15 or more and is bought by the hundreds to decorate homes all over the globe. In fact, so many people bought them that tritons were getting scarce, and the more scarce they became the more the crown-of-thorns multiplied and destroyed reefs without interference. Already they had killed more than ninety per cent of the coral along the coastline of Guam and destroyed three hundred miles of the Great Barrier Reef
.

  Hal went to the bottom and found a triton. He brought it up and plopped it down on a crown-of-thorns. It immediately flipped the starfish over on to its back, then swallowed its inside, and within fifteen minutes there was no crown-of-thorns.

  The way to kill this killer, Hal thought, was to start triton farms, raise great armies of tritons, and distribute them wherever the crown-of-thorns was found. He was sure his own father would be glad to start such a farm - so he went again to the bottom, collected a dozen tritons, and put them into his bag. This dozen, carefully protected and fed, would rapidly multiply and become thousands. If other animal collectors did the same thing, possibly many of the beautiful coral reefs could yet be saved.

  Hal went back to join his brother and found him watching a war of monsters. An army of huge crocodiles was doing battle with an army of tiger sharks.

  The millions of thirty-foot salt-water crocodiles were the real masters of these seas. They made life dangerous for all animals that came to the water’s edge to drink, women who came to get water, and men who went fishing only to have their boats upset and lose their lives to these hungry carnivores.

  During the Second World War Allied troops drove Japanese into a swamp along the seashore where they were attacked by hundreds of crocodiles. Of the thousand men who stumbled into that swamp only twenty survived. Some fell to gunfire, some drowned, but more than nine hundred were killed and eaten by crocodiles. It was one of the most deliberate and wholesale attacks upon man by any large animals at any time on record.

  In the battle that Hal and Roger now witnessed, the crocodiles had met their match. The opposing army was made up of hundreds of tiger sharks. They were called tigers not only because of their ferocity but because their young were striped like tigers. They were small compared with the mighty reptiles, about fourteen feet long instead of thirty, but they made up in speed what they lacked in length. They had been clocked at fifty miles per hour in short dashes.