‘That’s what we’ve always thought,’ Hal agreed. ‘But you can see for yourself it’s not true. Or at least, not always. I’ve got to take a picture of this.’
He turned the full beam of the searchlight on the flat fish, carefully read the exposure meter, and took several shots. His camera was of die instant developing sort and he could see his results within a few minutes. The flatfish showed up plainly.
‘And what are those small things?’ Roger said. ‘They look like red shrimp.’
‘That’s exactly what they are,’ Hal said, and he took more pictures.
Little wriggly tracks showed that there must be more small animals beneath the mud.
‘And there’s a fish I’ve never seen before in all my life,’ said Hal.
It looked like a bad dream. It had a great savage mouth a foot wide armed with teeth that could easily grind hard-shelled crabs and lobsters to bits and could nip off a human arm at one bite. The mouth seemed to be about all there was to it. The rest of the body tapered down to a thin tail and was covered with what looked like feathers but must be an unusual form of scales. Hal took a photograph of it. Then he caught it between the jaws of the steel grab.
‘What do you want it for?’ Roger asked.
‘I’ll bet it’s new to science,’ Hal said. ‘Of course it will die before we get it back to Undersea City. But then I’ll put it in a jar of preservative and send it to a museum to be classified and named.’
‘What makes you think the scientists don’t know about it already?’ Roger asked.
‘Of course I’m not sure,’ said Hal. ‘But I haven’t seen the like of it in any manual. I think we’ve discovered a new species.’
Roger was not easily convinced. ‘But almost everything has already been discovered. We can’t expect to find anything new.’
‘Why not?’ said Hal. ‘New animals are being discovered every year. Recently the Smithsonian Institution collected fish in the Marshall Islands. They got four hundred and eighty-one species. Seventy-nine of them were new. That’s one out of every six. Actually, human beings are only beginning to learn the mysteries of the ocean, and the very deep waters like these are practically unknown.’
‘Well,’ Roger said, ‘I have a name for this one already. Nightmare Huntii.’
Hal laughed. ‘Nightmare is good. But I’m sure they won’t give it our name. That’s too much to expect. Let’s go up.’
At first they climbed very slowly. The thick, heavy water held them back. They did not mind - it gave them time to see what went on about them. Many times they were happy that they were protected by the steel ball.
A huge manta or sea bat as big as a barn door peered in one of the windows. It must have been twenty feet across from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other. And almost as long as it was wide.
The sea bat was not a man-eater. But still it could cause trouble. It could come up under a small boat and upset it. It could leap ten feet into the air and if there happened to be a boat under it when it came down its two-ton weight could smash the boat and kill the passengers. But, though it had a mouth five feet wide, it had no taste for steel balls and could not have swallowed Deepboat if it had tried. It loved to play. It cavorted around the ball, gave it a push or two, then swam away.
‘Look - a dragon!’ exclaimed Roger. It certainly looked like one, and was quite terrifying as it came billowing into the beam of the searchlight. It was a full thirty feet long, not round, like a snake, but flattened and silver-sided, with a small mouth and deep-set, terrible eyes. But its most amazing feature was a flaming red mane like the mane of a horse that stood straight up from its head and neck. This waving mane did a sort of dance of fire in” the unearthly submarine light. Two long spikes that looked as sharp as daggers projected from the back of the head.
Hal said, ‘Sailors who have spotted it swimming along the surface with its head out of the water have thought that they were looking at a sea serpent. Its real name is oarfish, because it is flattened like an oar. It rises to the surface at sunset, but spends the day at great depths like these.’
The next passer-by was an eighteen-foot stingaree. It was a bad-tempered fish, would attack anything that came in its way, and did promptly attack the steel ball. It covered it like a blanket and tried to sting it to death. It was disappointed. Deepboat continued to rise, but more slowly because of the weight of the monster.
‘Wish we could get rid of this thing,’ Hal complained.
‘Turn on your top jets,’ Roger suggested.
‘Good idea,’ said Hal, and the stingaree found itself pushed up and away from the ball by the powerful jets.
It was a parade of monsters. The terror of the western Pacific, the great white shark, sometimes called White Death, most murderous of all sharks, a good forty feet long and equipped with many rows of saw-edged, razor-keen teeth, swam slowly by.
‘See the barracuda,’ Hal said.
Roger examined the creature. ‘That’s no barracuda,’ he said. ‘The barracuda never gets that big.’
‘There are many species of barracuda,’ Hal said. ‘This one is called the great barracuda. People out here have another name for it, tiger of the sea. Most barracuda don’t make trouble. But this one is always asking for it. Swimmers who have had their feet bitten off and don’t know what struck them imagine it must have been a shark, but more often the villain is the tiger.
‘Now there’s something really exciting,’ Hal exclaimed. ‘I must get a picture of that.’
‘Why it’s just a shark,’ said Roger.
‘Yes, but it’s a shark that has been “dead” for seventy million years.’
‘Then how come it’s alive now?’
‘It’s the goblin shark,’ Hal said. ‘Its fossil remains have been found in many parts of the world. But no one has reported seeing a live one, so the scientists put it down as extinct. But there it is alive and well. It’s only one of many creatures that naturalists have dismissed as being dead and gone, but are alive in some parts of the world, hidden away in the forests or in the deep waters of the ocean.’
He took the creature’s picture. That picture would make the authors of books on sea life add one more to the list of living creatures thought to have died out millions of years ago.
Arriving within two hundred feet of the surface, they used their phone to locate the Magic Carpet. They were glad to climb into the hoversub which was so much larger and more comfortable than the steel ball.
‘How far down did you go?’ one of the geologists asked.
‘All the way,’ Hal said.
‘Why all the way?’
‘We were under orders. Dr Dick wanted us to see what went on at the bottom.’
‘But we already know what goes on at the bottom.’ said the young geologist. ‘Nothing. Nothing could live under that pressure. Piccard took photographs down there. They didn’t show a thing.’
‘Look at these pictures,’ Hal said.
The four flatfish could be plainly seen. Also the red shrimp. And the feather-scaled creature, new to science, that Roger had named Hunt Nightmare.
‘Never would have believed it,’ said the pilot.
‘But these are small things,’ said one of the geologists. ‘It looks as if the scientists who say that there may be monsters deep down are talking through their hats.’
‘Not quite,’ Hal said. ‘We saw a fight between a whale and a giant squid. We were visited by the dragon oarfish and a giant manta and the great white shark.’
‘And don’t forget the stingaree,’ said Roger.
‘And the goblin shark,’ Hal said. One of the geologists stared.
‘You must have made a mistake,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen pictures of the fossils of the goblin shark. It died out millions of years ago.’
‘So we all thought,’ Hal agreed. ‘But look at this picture.’
The three others studied the photograph with interest.
‘Well it seems to me,’ admitted one of the geologis
ts, ‘you have a pretty good report to make to Dr Dick.’
Chapter 18
St George and the Dragon
Back in Undersea City, the boys went at their work with new energy.
They started fish farms where the best foodfish could be” grown, protected from sharks by those ‘undersea cowboys’, the dolphins. They had lobsters from Maine flown in and started a lobster farm. The best oysters from New England were planted and would grow to full size in half the time it would take in the colder waters of the American coast or Japan. By placing tiny grains of sand within the shells in the Japanese fashion they could produce cultured pearls. They discovered a place where whales gathered and conducted experiments in milking them, for whale milk is a rich, nutritious food. Milking machines drew off the milk. One whale could produce a ton of milk a day. The milk was too rich to drink but it was valuable in cooking and processing other foods.
The new fish they had found was sent in a bottle of preservative to the American Museum of Natural History by Dr Dick who insisted upon sending along Roger’s name for it, Nightmare huntii. The museum accepted the name and the young naturalists were more pleased to have a fish named after them than they would have been to have a monument erected in their honour.
Dr Dick called them in. ‘I have only one fault to find with you,’ he said.
‘What is that?’ Hal asked.
‘You have neglected one of your two jobs.’
‘What two jobs?’
‘One was to work for us. You’ve done that very well indeed. The other was to work for yourselves. You seem to have forgotten that. The understanding at the start was that besides serving the Undersea Science Foundation you were to be allowed to carry on your own work of collecting specimens for the aquariums of John Hunt and Sons. You’d better get on with that, or your father will be suing us for using up all of your time.’
‘But who will take our place?’ Hal asked. ‘Oscar Roach?’
‘If you think he can do it.’
‘I think so,’ Hal said. ‘I’ve been showing him the ropes, whenever I could get him away from his dishwashing. He’ll make you a good naturalist’
At first Hal had mistrusted Roach and trusted Kaggs. Now he had grown to trust Roach, but was beginning to have his doubts about the ‘missionary’.
Roach was delighted with his promotion from dishwasher to naturalist.
The boys turned to their second job. They collected rare specimens alive and transferred them to die tanks of the Flying Cloud. That ship would take them to Brisbane where they would be put aboard cargo vessels that would carry them to the Hunt Animal Farm on Long Island.
Their father would sell them to oceanariums such as Sea World near San Diego, Marineland near Los Angeles, the Marineland of Florida, the aquarium at Honolulu, Hawaii’s Sea Life Park and dozens of similar institutions all over the world.
Three gorgeously coloured trigger fish would be worth twelve hundred dollars. A very rare shark was caught. Australians had an odd name for it - the wobbegong. Elsewhere it is known as the carpet shark. When hauled up suddenly out of the sea it bursts with a sound like a rifle shot The first one the boys got exploded before
Captain Ted could get it into a tank. Another was eased up more slowly so as not to excite it and was successfully tanked.
The hammerhead shark was a prize worth five hundred dollars because its head, shaped like a hammer, was the most unusual in the shark world.
When the tanks were full Hal estimated the total value of the collection as coming very close to a hundred thousand dollars,
Dr Dick came round to the Hunt home with bad news.
‘I’m sorry to have to call on you for a little more help,’ he said. ‘A shark has been killing some of our people. It has done away with eight men during the last seven days. We have tried to frighten it away, but it seems to prefer to make its home in Undersea City. It swims up and down the streets and when people see it coming they rush to take refuge in their houses. People are afraid to go to the stores to get food, workmen are afraid to go to work. The shark has things all its own way. It goes right on picking off one person after another and there seems to be nothing we can do about it.’
‘Where do we come into it?’ Hal asked.
‘You know sharks. We don’t. Our miners know mining, the merchants know selling, our police know ordinary police duties, your good friend the Rev. Mr Kaggs knows the Bible, Roach is new to his job, nobody has expert knowledge of sharks - except you two. We want you to get rid of this unwelcome visitor before it kills any more of our people.’
‘What kind of shark is it?’ Hal asked.
‘I don’t know. It’s blue above and white below. Its body is slim and pointed. It has long gill slits. It’s about twenty-five feet long and must weigh a ton. Most sharks hesitate to attack people but this one doesn’t. It rushes in like a bolt of lightning. Sometimes it knocks a man down with its tail and then bites. Its teeth are very large and sharp. It takes off a leg or arm at one bite.’
Roger looked at his brother. It must be the mako,’ he said.
Hight,’ said Hal. ‘You’ve given us a very good description of it. It’s the mako, and no mistake. Along this coast they call it the man-eater. It has terrible teeth. Weren’t the teeth of your shark four inches long?’
Dr Dick nodded.
It’s a meanie,’ Hal said. ‘Even when it’s full of food it will attack - just because it’s vicious by nature. I wish you had given us any other member of the shark family to deal with. We don’t dare guarantee results, but we’ll do what we can.’
That’s all we can ask,’ said Dr Dick. He seemed well satisfied that title boys would find some way to get rid of this killer.
After he had gone Roger said, ‘Let me do it.’
Hal was surprised. ‘Of course, you can help me.’
‘No,’ Roger said. ‘You have other things to do. We can’t stop all of our regular work just to fool around with a shark. I can do that alone.’
‘But this is no ordinary shark,’ Hal reminded him. ‘The mako is the toughest and meanest brute in the Coral Sea. A boy would be no match for it. It’s a man’s job.’
Roger bristled. ‘And you think you’re a man,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget, you’re only five years older than I am.’
Hal suddenly understood what his young brother was thinking. Roger wanted to do this thing to prove that he was not just a kid.
Reluctantly, Hal said, ‘All right. Go ahead and try.’
‘You don’t think I can do it.’
‘I didn’t say that. But if you find you need help, let me know.’
Roger took the foot-long knife from his belt and began to sharpen the blade on a whetstone.
Hal looked on with amazement. ‘You’re not going to tackle that shark with a knife’.’
‘Why not?’
‘It would never get through the shark’s hide.’
‘His underside is soft,’ Roger said.
‘But you tried that once and it didn’t work.’
‘I didn’t try hard enough. If I have a good sharp knife and put some real power behind it I think I can make him feel it.’
Hal saw it was useless to argue.
Roger slipped on his aqualung, mask and flippers, and slid out through the hole in the floor. Where would he be most likely to find the mako? Where there were the most people. That would be on Main Street. He went down Barracuda, turned into Research Street, and stopped at the corner of Research and Main.
There were some people but no shark. The more venturesome miners were going to work, a few housewives were going to stores, young fellows who had no work were hanging around street corners just as they did in the world above. They couldn’t whistle at the girls who went by, but attracted their attention by striking their scuba tanks with a stone or stick.
Small, brightly-coloured reef fish swam around the heads of pedestrians, and there were a few larger fish, tuna, mackerel, and sea bass. Some people tried to grab them wit
h their bare hands. One man succeeded and his family would have tuna for dinner.
Some sharks appeared but they were small and timid and certainly not man-eaters.
Then Roger saw the mako idling down the street. There was no mistaking it - it was blue above, white below, and its teeth were four inches long. It stared about through big eyes like lamps.
People vanished from the street as if by magic. They plunged into the nearest shops, houses, public buildings. Roger felt like doing the same. People peered out through glass windows. They signalled to him to take refuge. Roger thought it was a very good idea - but there was something within him that forced him to swim up towards the oncoming enemy.
He had read about shark hunters who frightened the shark by swimming straight at it. Roger tried it. He was almost paralysed with fear. Those great lamp-eyes seemed to grow larger and more menacing the closer they came. The mako did not show the slightest inclination to back down or turn away. Instead, it opened its jaws ready to receive this tasty breakfast. Its hundreds of teeth, five rows in the lower jaw and five in the upper, made the dental apparatus of a lion or tiger look like nothing at all.
A shark that had never before met a human might be timid. But this one had met and killed eight humans within a week and had found them easy picking. Roger saw almost too late that he was not going to bluff this monster. When he was two feet away from the terrible reception committee of bared teeth, he dived and slid along the shark’s underside. He turned on his back and with all his strength drove the knife upwards against the smooth white skin.
The knife slightly dented the hide but that was all. Then the shark was gone.
Roger thrust his knife into the holster and swam back to the house.
‘How did you make out?’ Hal asked.
‘No luck. I jabbed him hard but the hide was too tough. I’m going to try a spear. After all, that’s what St George used against the dragon and dragons are tougher than sharks.’
He had always been fascinated by that old story. The dragon had been devouring humans and now was after the king’s daughter. St George had a soft spot in his heart for the princess and undertook to kill the dragon. He drove it through with his spear and he and the princess lived happily ever after.
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