THE ENDLESS MYSTERY

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4811, 17 July 1939, Page 7

THE ENDLESS MYSTERY

(Continued from page 3.)

Apprehensively he gazed on those sleek black branches. He had seen the sea trees before, as branchless saplings, their tops bending to the tide; had inquisitively gripped a sapling and felt it grow rigid as a bar of steel. He had stolen on one as it swayed apparently alive as no ordinary tree is alive. Its short bunch of roots gripped a coral block. He had raised his leaden-soled boot and kicked the roots heavily, the sudden jar detaching the sapling. But had he touched it first, with finger tips even, it would have quivered rigid

and past a man's strength to bend. The largest sapling he had yet seen was not more than twenty feet high. He remembered the ebony walking sticks, the' rings and bracelets the Torres Strait islanders carve from them.

But these were trees! Peering down he could distinguish ,a definite black trunk. Sleek black limbs, tapering thinly out, leafless, they sinuously swayed with the tide, bending as if by a caress. But the branches of Heywood's 'tree stretched rigid, the lifelines entangling between them as in a vice. "Like a spider pinched in his broken web," thought Heywood as the sluggishly struggling Japanese sprawled between the branches.

He was badly "squeezed"; he had failed to adjust his air-pressure with the immediate speed of Heywood. As he regained self-control he stared through the face-glass with eyes that expressed the fatalism of his race. For other divers have been caught in a sea-tree forest!

Heywood's vision was limited t\ peering space only through a souplike grey that melted in gloom. He looked up, gazing farther to where the life-lines and air-pipes vanished in liquid less dense. Questioningly, the Jap's life-line tautened. Hdywood watched with beating heart, knowing as the line took the strain that the lugger above had come abou„ with her engine set just to beat the tide. How they must be staring down, up there, unable to help two fellow-men only a few yards out of sight, but in another element! As the Japanese felt the pull he stared up. Heywood realised how he must be feeling, but his own heart pained as the limbs twisted across and his companion's life-line bulged tighter together in resistance to the strain. The slow steady pull came within danger of tearing the line from the suit. Then the bloated grey spider sagged pathetically clown again.

Just nothing could be done. They could not cut their lines and chance floating up "on the air." There remained the faintest hope that when the tide turned, strongly, those living limbs might release of their own accord. But if so, that would be—hours!

Heywood closed his eyes. In a flash (for the brain sees at vision speed when under that pressure) he realised that he was thirty-five fathoms down, possibly more—over extreme depth. On the extremely rare occasions when a man worked at that depth he was allowed only fifteen minutes below, which meant half an hour at least to haul him up, necessitating six halts at varying upward depths to decompress the nitrogen out of his veins. One hour down would mean three hours' upward journeying before they dared haul him right to the surface. Heaven! how many hours would he wait down here? They might require a day to haul him up. Would he be alive? If so, would his blood burst in nitrogen bubbles immediately they took the helmet off? He checked the thoughts with all the love of life that was in him and gazed at the swollen Jap, gazed into the mass around imperceptibly darkening, gazed at those hard black branches. "The grip of fate"—his thought felt aloof from his bodily feelings. "Nothing can break those black bands, set here at the bottom of the sea to catch us. They grip as if this job was their mission in life." Heywood felt sorry for the Japanese looking so helplessly monstrous, but since it was inevitable he was glad of his company. He was so close, and yet he might have been in the moon for all the help he could give.

The silence was appalling. He had no notion of time; a minute might be an hour. So utterly strange to lose the faculty of comprehending time! Unnoticeably, the greyish gloom turned to night. "My God, sundown! For three hours a man's veins have been inflated with nitrogen! Anyway, I won't

be able to see those eyes staring from the face-glass." He grew calm with the calmness of despair . Then all was black. Never had Heywood seen such pearls as shot up from the Jap's air-escape valve. A streak of effervescing green fringed with inexpressibly beautiful bubbles flashed past. "Fish. Phosphorus!"

Then everything turned purpleblack! Heywood's heart choked as around him sublime beauty massed in pearl-streaked light, irridescent with orange, whirled upward like a glittering comet.

"The Jap is dead!" he breathed. "Left me alone! Plunged his knife through his suit and let out the air!" For long, Heywood swayed in his suit. Then he groped for the lifeline to tug and let them know above. Besides, the answering tugs would help dispel this ghastly loneliness. But he could not raise his arm. He knew then that he, too, was dying; in a sublimely detached way he felt it was of little consequence. Queerly, far, far away he could still hear the throbbing hush of the pump. Fancy them still sending air down to him! The smell, too, of motor-oil came elusively down with each sobbing breath. Fancy smelling engineoil down here in the pitch night of the sea!

Then- the black velvet surrounding him grew pin-pricked with gold that glowed to a million million points of softly floating light, greens and reds and yellows glowing and fading and floating. A trail of orange shot through the pin-pricks chased by vicious sprays of fire. And gradually a ghostly eiulgence spread, through which Heywood found it more of an effort to peer than through solid green water. He gazed at the tree branches now glowinggreen with phosphorescent light. As he gazed the two limbs locked across the Jap's lines slowly slackened. "The devils!" thought Heywood. "They know that he is dead!"

But there came a questioning tug on the life-line and the limbs instantly tautened together. How long afterwards Heywood would never know, but stealthily the limbs eased apart; spread aside; their limbs eased outwards to revel in the tide, and the Japanese slid away. They felt the difference in the line, those men crouched, waiting on the lugger-deck, for they immediately began to haul up the line. Heywood smiled pityingly. The Jap's body was crushed and all squeezed by the water pressure right up into the corslet and helmet.

He watched that fadeless thing fade upward. "I wonder whether water-pressure up the pipe beat the air forced down and told them?" he mused. "Otherwise they will take twelve, sixteen hours to haul up a dead man. It is queer how little they know, and they only two hundred feet or so away!" Heywood had .gradually lost all bodily feeling. His mind felt now the dominant ego definitely drawing away, isolating itself as if it possessed a body independently its own. And he felt inexpressibly comforted. Patiently and with certitude he waited a change as* inevitable as night and day.

A monster fish glided between the branches, its scales distinct as shimmering jewels, its great eyes iridescent as an opal. And its way through the living phosphorescences sprayed fire. A much smaller fish, with two dainty bells of light drooping before its nose, darted towards Heywood's glass and peered. He smiled at the expression of snub-nosed alarm: "Don't be scared ugly fish. Things are not what they seem." They buried Heywood up on the grassy slope in the Diver's Graveyard, side by side with the Japanese.