THE SQUATTING DEVIL OF SAMARAI

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4805, 3 July 1939, Page 3

THE SQUATTING DEVIL OF SAMARAI

(Copyright.)

A story From the lips of French Louis the Diver, well-known resident of the Coral Seas. The "Squatting Devil" was known and dreaded by the divers manning the shelling fleets off New Guinea shores. YUSSUF was heartbroken. He had lost his only brother, stolen from his own ship. The lad had been steering by moonlight with Duppa. The others were below deck. There had come a sudden crash from the swinging boom, a scream and a thump as Duppa jumped straight down the companion-way.

After a second's silence Yussuf sprang up to the deck and instinctively snatched the tiller. But nothing was to be seen except the usual beauty of starlit waters spreading among dim islands. The deck was printed upon Yussuf's brain. It was exactly as usual. But Akran La, the little brothei 1 , was gone! And now Yussuf brooded, a raging

fury in his breast. For he had lost his honour with his brother, because there was no human foe whose life he could take as recompense to the old father v/aiting back there at Macassar. And the Malay who loses his honour dies accursed.

Squatting astern in his scarlet sarong, Yussuf thought deeply while the crew crouched for'ard tremblingly awaiting the dawn, Big Duppa especially! For the Malay with tigerish fierceness had throttled the big fellow until his tongue had swelled and his lips flacked with foam. But Duppa could tell him nothing —nothing that counted. He and the lad had been whispering of hazards of the sea and of the Hanuabada girls when something vague and dripping had reached from out the sea across the lugger's deck. It had coiled around Akran La and dragged him quite easily overboard. It had disappeared then. The lad had time only to scream once, chokingly, just as his head -touched the water. Duppa remembered that the lad's teeth and eyes shone very white; but he did not know what the thing was, except that it was a devil, like the devil-horse in the Thursday Island pictures that poked out its long nose and, curling it, lifted a man high into the air. Only this devil had no tusks. But it had many noses—and terrible eyes! Duppa gibbered when he whispered of those eyes. Calling all his years of sea wisdom to aid him in solving the mystery, Yussuf sat in the cold light of dawn sharpening his knife.

MY friend Billy Banner finds in

life a quiet happiness, and a never-ceasing pleasure in its wonders. Now he was merry, for a little visitor at Port Moresby was greyeyed and quite delightfully saucy and eager to absorb island lore during her wonderful holiday. And Billy, well Billy, where a pretty face is concerned cannot help being just a little sentimental. Billy at the party had promised her a pearl, a "dinkum tearstone" from a New Guinea pearloyster. Like other Sydney visitors, she vaguely imagined that pearls grew plentifully on the sea shores. Then young Clapham, clerk at Burns Philp's, had jokingly asked Billy if he-would snatch the pearl from the bottom of : the" Devil's Pool. Billy immediately promised this, too, quite tickled at the, idea. But several of the experienced men .looked askance; and the girl was told all about the Devil's Pool.

If you know the Samarai waters, that is if you are interested in pearling, then you must have heard of the Devil's Pool. It is a great hole in the sea bed, a long way from the palmgirt island, in which dwells an oldman octopus of giant size and unguessable strength. Divers, so several assert, have seen an occasional one of these brutes along the Great Barrier Reef and in isolated spots in the Coral Sea. Such localities, once identified, are well and truly shunned by the fishing fleets, whether trochus men or hunters of pearl and beche-de-mer. The Devil of Samarai, as this one was familiarly called by the older divers, was known because it had chosen its den in a bed of rich shell, and divers had seen it. A South Seas man and a Manila man had apparently seen it, too, but they never returned to tell. Since then no one had been down into the Pool to see. Some men pooh-poohed the tale. But the girl, genuinely alarmed, forbade Billy to risk his life. Her plea decided him. What had begun as a joke he determined to 'carry through in earnest. Besides, there would be profit in it, for that particular area of the shell bed

By lON L. IDRIESS.

AUSTRALIA'S MOST POPULAR WRITER.

guarded by this alleged octopus would be quite unexploited. With rising interest he hoped an octopus, a big old-man one, would really be there. For Billy loved the uncommon aspects of life, and the underwater world had livened his imagination with fascinating glimpses of a life of which man has but a very faint conception. To seek a pearl in an octopus den, and to have that unique experience sweetened first by the smile, and then by the fears of a pretty girl, promised an experience exceptionally piquant. Probably a rich haul of shell awaited Billy; but as for a pearl—a diver may open five hundred shells and not find one! Billy knew all this. Still, the gods smile on the venturesome, and this was their chance. A pearl snatched from the Devil's Pool—perhaps in the sight of the old man himself! Billy smiled in delighted anticipation. He had quite a thrilling storehouse of memories against old age, and this anticipated adventure promised to be a gem.

But the men of the Coral Sea liked Billy. When the* party broke up an old resident frowned upon him: "You won't be such a fool, Billy!" he urged. Billy smiled cheerfully. "I'll get that pearl if I have to salt the octopus's tail." "Mad!" said Moorhouse,, grimly. "You know that the beast has really been seen; you know that the deaths of several native divers have been attributed to it. Give the girl a pearl from an old shell. She won't know the difference!"

"But I will," smiled Billy, thinking of his memories. "She shall have the genuine article with the Octopus brand. Why, she will treasure that 'tear of the sea' all her life."

"She'll know quite a lot of tears if daddy-long-legs fastens hold of you," answered the old resident grimly. But Billy laughed and went whistling along to the water-way whera the lugger lay with her nose turned inshore as if waiting his coming.

TT was a divinely bright day, showing the water clear for many fathoms deep. "It would be almost clear as moonlight down below," mused Billy as the lugger glided along—"why, even at ten fathoms a man should be able to see the sea things winking!" It was slack tide when they lazed over Devil's Pool, with hardly a breath of wind. In the near distance a dirty grey lugger was drifting towards them, the Malay skipper sombrely watching the other craft's preparations. When Billy was getting into his clumsy dress the vessels had drifted so close that the crews were hallooing to one another across the water.

Billy idly wondered if big Yussuf the Malay would pluck up courage to dive in company. He rather wished Yussuf wouldn't; he wanted the grim chance of this dive all to himself.

Clumsily he waddled overside, clinging to the short ladder while the tender screwed his helmet down. Through the open vizor Billy took a final glance at the sky—he always liked to do that—then smiled and nodded, and the tender screwed the face-glass in. Billy waited for the "click-clack, click-clack" of the motor pump; then he regulated the rush of air by the valve screwed to his helmet. Finally he slung himself backwards and went down slowly in a radiant whirl of bubbles.

He slipped into green twilight that dimmed softly until it enveloped him in dull green gloom. He met the corals while still going down. Far out they stretched, enclosing him in a basin of battlemented shapes dangerous with black caverns, curtained plants drooping from purple ramparts that trellised an occasional flower like a white phosphorescent lily tiger-striped with yellow. But Billy wondered that he saw no sign of fish, bar the swarms of tiny coloured beauties that darted into the flower gardens at his monstrous approach. He came to rest on a gravelly bottom carpeted with yellow seagrass and was interested, because a large gravel patch surrounded by corals was unusual to him. Basinlike sponges pulsed dreamily among upright grasses that showed no slightest sway of their tops, so still was the tide.

He stood there awhile, his right hand at the helmet regulating the airvalve so that he was receiving exactly the supply of air to withstand the pressure from him without. Very important indeed is that little air-

valve. By its aid the diver lives and works while down below , and continuously fights the sea as it ceaselessly strives to crush him with the weight of its varying • depths. Then curiously he peered more, closely about him, and chuckled happily at sight of black-lipped pearl. The shell was here right enough, poked away up among the crevices and bopeeping from the weedy bottom. It was only the snappiest glimpse of pearl that he caught, for they shut their tell-tale lips instinctively as he approached . Clumsily he walked ahead, side-stepping in grotesque fashion when sinking down to pick up a shell; straightening himself like a bulging automaton to drop each find into the network bag at his waist. So he ■ manoeuvred on along a shelving bottom that sloped into deeper gloom.

Apparently the grey-eyed Sydney girl stood a real chance of getting her pearl. But where was the devil that guarded this breeding-hole in the sea? He felt like that schoolday when he had stolen a farmer's water-melon in ticklish trepidation over the watch-dog that never appeared.

In quick time he had bagged thirty shells, an excellent pick-up. He signalled and down came an empty bagon a cord ringed around the line. Billy detached his full bag and signalled it up, then plodded on full of enthusiasm. It would be stiff luck if this hole did not yield more than one pearl, provided he could work it undisturbed for a week. Whether or not, there were some tons of shell here which would pay handsomely, perhaps yield a trip to Sydney. Billy smiled, determined to find that pearl. Suddenly Billy stood still. For a ledge had taken shape just ahead, and fronting it lay a vague rubbish heap of white things and yellow carapaces of turtle, dugong skulls, and bones of monster fish. And the realisation of what they meant thumped at his heart. With an almost breathless alertness he moved very slowly a few yards nearer.

And the nearer vision brought the dim things into surer relief. Billy stood again, staring at the tall brown stalks of sea-grass, staring at where they were freshly bowed down, and in horror saw among the fronds the shadowy body of a man. There was no mistaking that brownish-white form, dimly magnified by the water. He seemed so forlorn, that lone human in his nakedness, so quietly reclining at the bottom of the sea. Then a shadowy thing appeared beyond Billy's face-glass as something moved from the outer gloom and, floating down, squatted on the ledge and glared at him.

The octopus was mesmeric in its hideousness. Its bag-li|ce body roughly resembled a nuggety man shorn of legs and arms. Its tentacles, thick as elephants' trunks, were loosely looped before it, the snaky ends trailing down far over the ledge. Billy fearfully guessed that each might reach out thirty feet. He loathed the squat black belly of that thing, suggestive of enormous expansion.

Shrouded amongst the tentacles he glimpsed a horrid beak. But it was the eyes that held him! Big almost as saucers, and water-green, their phosphorescent glare was terrifyingly powerful—diabolical as anything in the Pit.

As Billy shivered and watched, the thing visibly changed colour, its blackish-brown merging into the varied colours of the surrounding seaplants. But its eyes!

Billy's hand moved and shut tight the air-escape valve while signalling "More air!" Instantly the full power from the pump above seethed into the suit and almost immediately it began to bulge from the added air; but with his guarded movement the beast had also moved. Imperceptible that movement as with an uncanny effect of effortlessness its tentacles wafted out and their ends looped lightly around crags above and to the side of Billy.

Signalling to the tender, he gripped a coral block to prevent the lift of the air-inflated suit from dragging him off the ocean floor, for his only chance now was a whirling escape. The suit ballooned out fast, giving him an isolated feeling of roominess, the leather and rubber stretching to the stiffness almost of steel. Soon his arms felt they were being dragged out of their sockets. He hung on tenaciously, his body feather-light. As his fingers slipped from the anchoring coral he shot instantly upwards until brought up short as a tentacle of the Horror shot out and gripped the life-line. Billy floundered in a desperate endeavour, to keep his head and balance. Through the face-glass he saw what was coming—the body of the octopus clouding through the midwater. Stretched to their limit, two tentacles gripped the bottom, others coiled out towards him; while several, like tautened cables, clung to his life-line. In a flash he wondered whether the air inflating his suit could possibly tear the beast from its grip or would the tough leather burst first?

Frantically he snatched out his knife as a tentacle threatened his body; he knew he must prevent that or he was done. He screwed tight the air-valve which abandoned him to silence. Taking a last desperate chance he slashed through air-pipe and life-line and would have, shot free but that a tentacle tip had fastened around the neck of his helmet. He glimpsed the quiver of the beast as the severed life-line had released him upwards. He slashed impotently at the coil around his neck—and another on the instant fastened ai'ound his arm.

Helplessly now he writed, a prisoner within an air-filled suit. He wondered how long it would hold him to the bottom while almost imperceptibly lashing around him. He felt the slow, steady heave as it overcame the buoyant resistance of the air-filled suit, all that air pressing up into his helmet, fighting to shoot to the surface. Very slowly he was dragged down feeling the tearing pressure of the air striving to force him up. His head was thundering, his mind a seething hope that he might die quickly of air-paralysis ov anything—anything except of this beast.

Consciousness was slipping into madness when a beautiful bronzed figure came speeding down from above, gliding swiftly down from green twilight into gloom. Into his roaring head came dimly some fancy of an angel.

VUSSUF, with his loved knife between his teeth, made terribly sure to thoroughly avenge the little brother. He struck downwards from behind, slitting open the envelope of the creature with one long, dreadful gash.

Billy Banner, obscured in a dense cloud of foul black ink one second, the next was shooting up through the depths to burst through the surface and float like a grotesque balloon. ' "Thank God!" cried the distracted tender. "Overboard with the dinghy quick!" he yelled to the crew boys.