11 Diving Adventure

by Willard Price

  Chapter 7

  Rascal or saint?

  Kaggs stared at the boys.

  ‘Well, I’ll be a donkey’s uncle,’ he growled. ‘They told me somebody would be coming in but I didn’t know it would be you.’

  ‘Nice of you to remember us,’ Hal said.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ Kaggs grumbled.

  ‘You did your best to make sure we’d be dead,’ said Hal. ‘Last time we saw you was when you sailed away and left us to die on a desert island.’

  Kaggs smiled an evil smile. ‘Well now, that was just a little fun. Anyhow that’s all past and gone.’ He tried to be a little more agreeable. ‘I’m sure you’re not the sort to hold a grudge against anybody. There’s no reason we can’t be friends.’

  He climbed in and went to his room to take off his gear and get into dry clothes.

  He came back and sat down. ‘Now, boys, I think we should have a little talk. Did the boss tell you I was here?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Did you say you had met me before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to tell him anything about - about what went on?’

  ‘We can’t promise,’ Hal said.

  Kaggs’ face darkened. ‘So, you can’t promise. Well, you’d better promise. I belong here. You know I used to be a pearl trader in these islands.’

  ‘Or a pearl stealer,’ Hal said. ‘And now you think you have a good thing going here. The stealing should be good where men will be digging up gold and silver and perhaps diamonds and pearls and treasure from wrecks and rare specimens of animal life that will be worth thousands of dollars…’

  “Now, now,’ Kaggs interrupted. ‘You have me all wrong. I know I didn’t behave myself very well when you knew me. But all that is changed. I pretended to be a man of the Bible. Now I really am. I saw the error of my ways. I was a crook - you see I own up to it frankly. I went around under an assumed name, the Reverend Archibald Jones. I didn’t tell anybody I had done two murders and spent a spell in prison. All that is behind me. I am here under my own name, Merlin Kaggs. That ought to be enough to convince you that I have changed. Now I think only of others - not of myself. Don’t you think I deserve another chance? If you peach on me I am ruined. I want you to promise to keep mum.’

  ‘Don’t you think you are asking too much? We should tell all we know about you so as to protect Dr Dick and people here against any more of your dirty work.’

  ‘But I tell you I’ve changed,’ protested Kaggs. ‘I’ve returned to my mother’s knee. In memory of my saintly father - he was a clergyman, you know - I only want to do good from now on.’

  ‘Horsefeathers!’ Roger exploded.

  Kaggs looked at him severely. ‘Young fellow, that’s no way to speak to a man of the Lord. I shall pray for you both.’

  He went to his room.

  1 vote we tell Dr Dick all about him,’ Roger said.

  His older brother shook his head. ‘I don’t like to do that. There’s just one chance in a thousand that he means what he says. Perhaps it’s only one chance in a million - I don’t know. Anyhow, there’s no rush. Let’s wait and see how things go.’

  ‘I’m afraid they’ll go from bad to worse,’ his brother said. ‘Oh, I know how you feel - you’ve got the crazy idea that there’s some good in everybody. That’s because you’ve had too much to do with animals. There’s some good in any animal, but I’m not so sure about people. Especially Kaggs. I’m afraid of him. If we don’t promise to be quiet, hell try to do us in.’

  ‘That’s a bridge we’ll cross when we come to it,’ Hal said.

  Hal was soon much too busy to worry about Kaggs. He had a hundred ideas. He boiled with ambition to put them into practice.

  ‘First,’ he told Dr Dick, ‘I’d like to go fishing.’

  Dr Dick’s eyebrows went up. This young naturalist had been engaged to do some very serious work. And right at the start he wanted to play hookey and go fishing.

  Hal grinned. ‘I know what you’re thinking. But I’m not really a playboy. In fact I think fishing is about the most important thing I can do. Millions of people are on the edge of starvation. But there are billions upon billions of good foodfish in the sea. Our fishermen don’t get them. Oh, they let down a hook and pull up one fish, or a net and pull up a few dozen. Our ancestors did the same thing a thousand years ago. Fishing methods haven’t kept up with the times.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ Dr Dick said. ‘Do you think you can spark a revolution in fishing?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’d surely like to try. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. In New York before we came I bought modern equipment that should make it possible to bring up thousands of fish at a time instead of one or a hundred.’

  ‘What sort of equipment?’

  ‘Slurp guns, stiletto lights, machines for fishing by electric shock, ultrasonic beam instruments, anaesthetics, milking machines to milk whales, laser beam units, and an airlift like a vacuum cleaner to pump whole schools of fish up into a ship.’

  Dr Dick was looking at Hal as if he had never seen him before. ‘I think we got more than we bargained for when we got you. Most of those things are new to me. Some of them I have heard of, but never dreamed they could be used for fishing.’

  ‘Perhaps they can’t,’ admitted Hal. “That’s what we will find out.’

  “They sound expensive,’ said Dr Dick. ‘I think the Foundation should pay for them. If you give me a bill I will see that it is paid.’

  There will be no bill,’ Hal said. ‘Let’s say they are the contribution of John Hunt and Sons to your project. After all, we don’t know whether they will work or not.’

  ‘One question,’ Dr Dick said. ‘Many fish are no good as food. How are you going to find great schools of good foodfish that you can bring up by the thousand?’

  ‘One way,’ said Hal, ‘will be to let our friend help us.’

  ‘Who is that? Kaggs?’

  ‘No, not Kaggs. Our new friend is the gentleman who is looking in through the window. Dr Dick, meet Mr Bottle.’

  The scientist stared at the dolphin. ‘Why, that’s just a dolphin - how can it help you?’

  ‘Sonar,’ Hal said.

  Dr Dick shook his head. ‘I don’t understand you. But I have a lot of faith in you. Go ahead with your experiments, and good luck to you.’

  Hal and Roger took off again in the jeep and Bottle followed. This time Roger handled the stick expertly and he gave the windows of the next house a wide berth and ran no danger of nipping off the heads of walkers and swimmers in Barracuda Street.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Roger asked.

  ‘A big school of fish.’

  ‘But there are fish all around us.’

  ‘Yes, but most of them aren’t good to eat. Just now we’re interested only in fish that would make good food.’

  It was a long search before they found what they were after - a large school of fat fish all close together and pointing in the same direction like birds on migration.

  ‘Just the thing,’ Hal said. Tuna - fine eating. It has taken us more than an hour to find them. But it takes a surface ship days to locate a school of tuna. And then each fisherman pulls out one at a time on hook and line. All that makes tuna in the stores cost ten times what it would cost if the schools could be found quickly and easily and the fish could be drawn up by thousands instead of by ones. A lot of people around the world who can’t afford to buy tuna or any other flesh could then buy it. I’ll leave you for a little while.’

  He dropped out of the jeep, swam to the dolphin, petted him, then put his arm round his neck and swam with him to the school of tuna.

  The tuna, as curious as most fish, gathered round the man and the dolphin. Bottle tried to grab one of them but Hal restrained him. He must not be allowed to frighten the fish by attacking them. He stayed for many minutes to give Bottle plenty of time to get it through his head that these fish were something special, something more important
to his human friend than most fish.

  When Hal thought there had been time for this lesson to sink in, he took Bottle back to the jeep.

  He stayed a few minutes, then turned his companion round and set off again towards the school. Since the tuna had been swimming slowly they were not exactly where they had been before. This time Hal let Bottle act as the guide. The dolphin immediately set off towards the new location of the school. He didn’t wait to be led -he towed his friend along so fast that Hal needed to do no swimming but simply to hang on. Again they visited the school, and again returned to the jeep. They all went back to the house but did not park the jeep in the garage.

  After ten minutes in the house, Hal said, ‘Now we will see what he has learned. You get into the jeep ready to go. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  He slipped out and again put his arm round Bottle’s neck. He began to take Bottle where the school was - or had been.

  But Bottle would have none of it. He struck off in a different direction. Hal let him go, climbed into the jeep and followed him.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Roger said. ‘He’s going in the wrong direction. He doesn’t know what you want him to do.’

  ‘Well see,’ Hal said. ‘Perhaps he knows what he’s doing. Put on more power. He’s shooting along like a torpedo.’

  The dolphin constantly clicked as he swam. ‘What’s ail the clicking for?’ Roger wondered.

  ‘Sonar,’ Hal said. Before he could explain, they sighted the school of tuna.

  Before, it had taken them one hour to find the school. Now they had reached it in two minutes.

  Roger was puzzled. ‘Why didn’t he go where the school had been? Instead he took an entirely new direction.’

  ‘Sonar is the answer,’ Hal said. ‘Sonar is a way to use echoes. You know how a bat can fly around in complete darkness and avoid bumping into rocks, trees, or anything else. It keeps making little noises that bounce back from anything they strike. The bat steers itself by these echoes. It can tell just how near it is to the object by the strength of the echo. The dolphin can do the same thing. That’s why he keeps clicking - so he can guide himself by the echoes. And that’s why he took a new direction. The school had been swimming and wasn’t where it had been.’

  Roger objected, ‘But there must have been thousands of echoes coming from all around. How could he tell which echo came from the school of tuna?’

  Hal shook his head. ‘Now you’ve -asked the million-dollar question. Nobody knows - yet. The American Navy is spending a million dollars a year trying to find out.’

  ‘Why is it so important?’

  ‘Because if we knew just how the dolphin’s echo system works, we could make a machine to do the same thing. That may take many years. In the meantime they have learned some amazing things about the dolphin. One of their researchers, Dr Winthrop Kellogg, has found that the dolphin doesn’t even need to see to find what he is after. Dr Kellogg blindfolded a dolphin and then threw a fish into the water. The dolphin went straight for the fish and swallowed it.’

  ‘That’s hard to believe,’ Roger said.

  ‘So it is. But here’s something harder to believe. Kellogg proved that a blindfolded dolphin can tell the difference between one kind of fish and another. A certain dolphin liked mullet but hated sprats. He was blindfolded and put in a tank with both. He promptly went around the sprats and gobbled down the mullets.

  ‘The dolphin, with his eyes still covered, was put in a tank with one mullet and one imitation mullet made of plastic. It was exactly the same size and shape as the real mullet The dolphin gave it the cold shoulder and went straight for the real fish.

  ‘Another dolphin was taught to play a sort of game of ball. The dolphin was shown a steel ball and at the same time he was given a fish. Then he was introduced to another steel ball just a tiny bit smaller and he got no fish. Then he was blindfolded and both balls were thrown into the water. He immediately shot down and brought up the larger ball and was given a fish. He repeated this performance twenty times without a single mistake. And there was so little difference in the size of the balls that the trainer couldn’t tell them apart and had to use calipers to find out which was larger. But the dolphin’s sonar took him to the right ball every time.’

  Roger looked at his dolphin with pride. ‘Golly, he’s smarter than we are.’

  Hal agreed. ‘In some ways - much smarter.’

  ‘But there’s one thing I don’t understand,’ said Roger. ‘You’ve proved that a dolphin can find in a few seconds a school of fish that it might take a fishing smack many hours or even days to locate. But after you’ve found your fish, how do you get them up into the boat?’

  ‘Good question,’ Hal said. ‘We’ll try to find an answer right now. Hand me that radiophone.’

  He took the instrument and called, ‘Flying Cloud, Captain Ted Murphy, are you there? Captain Ted, glass jeep calling.’

  After a moment came the reply, ‘Murphy speaking. Is this Hal Hunt?’

  ‘Right. Ted, we’re going to send up some fish. Fill the big tank. We’ll come near you and let up a signal buoy at the end of a line. Follow the flag and we’ll guide you to the fish. Make ready to drop the vac.’

  ‘Got it,’ replied Captain Ted. ‘Okay and out’

  ‘What’s the vac?’ Roger asked.

  ‘The vacuum cleaner. You know - the big suction hose we bought in New York.’

  Roger looked puzzled. But he asked no more questions. He would just wait and see.

  The jeep, aided by Bottle, led the ship to a point directly above the great school of tuna.

  ‘AH right, Ted. Let ‘er down, and turn on the pump.’

  The great black hose snaked down. ‘Turn on the searchlight,’ Hal said. For centuries fishermen had known that a bright light attracts fish. Roger switched on the light The tuna at once gathered near it

  Hal slipped out of the jeep and took the end of the hose. It was trembling with the powerful pull of the pump. Hal was careful not to put his arm near the nozzle. That was a good way to lose an arm. The suction was so great that it had been known to draw the blood out through a man’s skin.

  The vac was nothing new. It had been used for years by treasure hunters to suck up the sand that covered old wrecks. But no one had thought to use it for fishing. That was Hal’s idea, and he had no notion whether it would work or not

  Fish shot into the hose faster than he could count them. He directed the nozzle wherever the fish were thickest. Up they streamed, and into the tank above. Dozens, scores, hundreds made the climb within minutes. Their place was taken by other fish, crowding in towards the light, curious about the great black snake. They were swallowed by it before they could flip a tail. Within ten minutes the entire school numbering several thousand fish had. gone aboard the Flying Cloud. A fishing smack would require days, perhaps even weeks, to equal this record.

  Hal returned to the jeep and took up the phone. ‘That’s it, Ted.’

  ‘Heavens to Betsy,’ came back the voice of the astonished captain. ‘The fish in that tank are packed together like sardines.’

  ‘Good,’ Hal said. ‘Take them in to Cairns and deliver them to the fishing co-op. And tell them how we got them.’

  Hal went to report to Dr Dick. Dick listened with wide-eyed astonishment.

  ‘Never heard anything like it in my life,’ he said. ‘Do you know, young man, that you’ve just started a revolution in fishing? Fishing by dolphin and vacuum cleaner! I’m going to send the story in to the scientific journals and the Associated Press. The A.P. will syndicate it to newspapers all over the world. There’ll come a day when every fisherman will begin to think in terms of dolphin and vac instead of hook and net. But will the supply of tuna hold out?’

  ‘It’s not limited to tuna,’ Hal said. ‘There are lots of other good foodfish that travel in schools - albacore, mullet, bass, cod, menhaden, barracuda, cobia, kingfish, wahoo, dorado, and a hundred others. Of course my scheme falls flat when it comes to fis
h that don’t school and are too big to go up a vac - swordfish, sawfish, shark, Pacific sea bass, and so on. I’m thinking about other ways to get them.’

  ‘You have a good think-machine,’ Dr Dick said. ‘I’m sure you will solve that problem too.’

  Chapter 8

  Killer whale

  ‘We have visitors,’ Roger said when Hal returned to the cottage. “There they are, just outside.’

  Two other dolphins had joined Bottle. Now they came and thrust their heads up through the ‘front door’ in the floor. All three sent up fountains of spray from their blowholes as dolphins and porpoises commonly do when they thrust their heads into air.

  Kaggs happened to be sitting near by and got the full benefit of the shower. He leapt up, wiped his face, and said angrily, ‘That’s the limit. I object to sharing this cottage with three wild beasts.’ He kicked at the nearest one, and all three dropped out of the hole.

  Roger was annoyed. ‘That’s no way to treat guests.’

  Kaggs growled, ‘They’re no guests of mine. If you want to associate with animals, that’s your lookout Perhaps you’re half animal yourselves. I’m above that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’m sorry they frightened you,’ Roger said.

  ‘Frightened nothing,’ Kaggs retorted. ‘It would take more than that to scare me.’

  He promptly got more than that. He got the shock of his life.

  Up through the hole came two terrific jaws. They towered up into the room five feet high. Both upper and lower jaw bristled with savage teeth. There were half a hundred teeth and each was as long as a man’s hand and sharp as a spear. The great mouth looked like that of a huge crocodile.

  The monster gnashed these great teeth together with a sound like that of a machine gun. The terrified Kaggs shrank into the farthest comer of the room.

  It’s a killer whale,’ Hal said.

  That was enough for Kaggs. He slid along the wall to the door of his own room, got inside and slammed the door.

  Here was a creature that had often been described as the ‘most fearful animal on land or sea’. There were many stories of killers having bitten holes in small boats, upset the occupants, and swallowed them whole. And yet, whenever these stories had been carefully investigated, it was found that the attacks had been made by great sharks and not by killer whales.