Golden Hair.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4814, 24 July 1939, Page 6

Golden Hair.

(Copyright.)

A diver’s adventure in the Coral

Sea which cured him of treasure-

seeking.

“It’s a sporting chance,’ argued Leslie. “In any case we can’t lose financially. You hire the diver and gear; I supply the cutter. The wreck is there. It must be an ancient craft. There are no records I dont’ say there is treasure aboard, but it will be strange if she doesn’t carry material sufficient to repay us for the very moderate outlay on the venture. Your holiday expenses, to Melbourne and back to Thursday Island will cost you as much as the diver’s fees. Make this venture your holiday instead. Even if the wreck turns out a complete dud, we can still make money by sailing to the shelling-beds and employing the diver at pearlshelling. He’ll be able to dive much deeper than my native crew; so we’ll work ground I’ve been unable to exploit before, and return loaded with pearl-shell. And that, at its present price, is as good as treasure.” “H’m,” said Peters, uncertainly. “Sounds all right; but I’m a business man with a reputation. How the North would laugh if I went Spanishgalleon hunting! If there was only a successful precedent, now.” “Got you!” replied Leslie triumphantly. “There IS a precedent. All the North knows about Jardine, of Somerset, and the old chest with £3OOO odd of Spanish and Mexican dollars he recovered off the Great Barrier Reef!”

JpAR-stretching water, calm and lagoon-green, sparkling in the sun’s rays. The wooded Torres Strait isles, clear cut and beautiful; the cutter motionless, yet with an illusory air of a living thing capable of foaming life should quick need arise, i In carefree curiosity the blackboys grouped around the “Syd-nee man,” Burton donning the divingdress. Leslie was about to adjust the helmet when the diver’s halfgestures halted him. Burton gazed around as if loath to leave the beauty of the world. Almost shyly he glanced up at the immensity that receded in a superb arch of blue; then at the world into which he would disappear in the space of minutes. With an impatient smile he signalled for the helmet. Under Leslie’s supervision the boys stood by the air pump. The diver stepped overboard and, climbing heavily down the ladder, threw himself clear into the water. Slowly his cumbrous body disappeared, followed by the grotesque dome of the helmet in a spray of air bubbles. Diminishing ripples wavered to the cutter’s side. Like a coffin of lead gently sinking, the diver faded into the darkening waters along the reefedge. A black-boy, leaning overside, watched intently as the indistinct form merged into the depths. As Burton slipped down into the peopled silence, he adjusted his airvalve to the different pressures. He was going down to a great depth, so those on the cutter kept him suspended at intervals, fifteen minutes at a time, to accustom his system to the increasing pressure. His blood might “boil” otherwise. The wreck lay at the extreme limit of diving depth. Warily his boots came to rest on a shell-encrusted beam. Experience directed his eyes upwards. Through his face-glass he could dimly see the air-line stretching up through opaqueness into greenness, to merge into yellowgreen towards the surface. He could distinguish the cutter’s keel, and as through many fathoms of gradually lightening glass he saw the sun, a dull red disk floating i nthe dimmest blue. The experience was new and thrilling. At such a depth, even in the Coral Sea on a bright day, it was extraordinary that he could see the lighter water above—let alone the cutter and water-red sun. Seeking an explanation of the phenomenon he gazed about him. He was in a vast crevice between two converging reefs of coral. Where the chasm had narrowed the old wreck had caught. The sun’s rays shooting down directly overhead had somehow been concentrated by the magnifying properties of the water within the angle of the coral walls and helped vision amazingly. This was Burton’s first dive in the Coral Sea, and he was fascinated. Already, high up around air-pipe and life-line darted a cloud of inquisitive fish, more entrancing than the shimmer of parrots through sunlight. The creamy walls, creepered with “sea ivy,” rising on either side were reminiscent of medieval battlements.

By lON L. IDRIESS.

AUSTRALIA’S MOST POPULAR WRITER,

A thing like a floating gossamer veil emerged from the gloom and pulsed away —a maze of cells of recurring pin-pricks of light. Burton sensed that its seeming helplessness really held power and purposeful life.

Grotesque vegetable growths flaunted from the thousand coral crannies. Some were miniature trees, with queer tapering stems that sinuously swayed where there was not the slightest movement of the water; many were plants of nightmare form and “flowers” that would surprise even in a garden of dreams. He stared as a green cabbage-like growth slowly unfolded white petals and displayed a yellow heart alive with a phosphorescent glow. An eelshaped fish nosed towards the brilliance; instantly the petals whipped around it and closed, the disappearing tail wriggling frantically as the clenching petal dulled back to green.

Burton glanced at the wreck, now a skeleton, its ribs clothed with the life of the sea. It looked utterly forlorn in this silent, living world. And yet so rottenly dead, with all that riotous life growingv-in and upon and around it.

Again he glanced up. The lifeline and air-pipe were sagging a little, so he signalled to take in the slack. A sagging line is a menace, for it is liable to become fouled around a block of coral or, should the diver slip into a hole in the sea then he slips straight down to the limit of the line, resulting probably in paralysis from suddenly increased water-pressure. Cautiously Burton put foot upon what dimly suggested coral-grown timber, and gazed down at the sponges and sea-grass, trying to distinguish where might be the hold of this long dead ship. Possibly the ship might have been Spanish; but it seemed so old that but for its size, as shown vaguely by the sea-growths, it could have been a craft of the Norsemen.

Presently he smiled. Though a riotous floral growth waved from its shell-encrusted muzzle, he recognised a drooping encrustation as an oldtime cannon. The wreck was not so very old, after all. At least only a hundred years, or two at most! Those vanished centuries were a bond of sympathy between man and ship. They represented a limit in time whereas this drear world of the fishes seemed to have lived for ever and ever.

Very slowly Burton worked his way along, with a creepy feeling that if he slipped off the timbers and coral arms he would sink straight down through the vegetable life into a bottomless pit of weeds. A longshadow crept past and, lithely turning, came again. Burton was not afraid of sharks, but this fellow’s movements and cold green eyes were menacing. It circled close, then almost twisted in its own length, as if reluctant to keep its jaws from claiming this new thing that was rightfully its.

Burton had met inquisitive sharks before and taken only a wary notice of them, but he disliked this one immediately. It was so plainly going to attempt a kill; it so obviously regarded the diver as his prey. When the tiger of the sea came swiftly close again Burton’s hand touched his air-release valve. To the spray the shark dived convulsively and was gone. Burton laughed. After all, sharks among the coral reefs were as cowardly as those of the harbom-s farther south. He felt his way cautiously, reassured. A bloated growth like a big balloon, all rainbow jelly throbbing with life, waved before him. He touched it; its colours dimmed to watergreen, and it slowly disappeared within itself. Amazed, Burton watched the big thing until, small as a garden pea, it vanished withi na crevice of coral.

From a cavern a hideous, moveless head watched him; glaring from unblinking eyes, crueller than the eyes of a snake. Burton recollected tales of the giant groper, of how {hey had been known at a single bite to snap off the leg of a diving black-boy.

That monstrous head waited within a cavern just above the centre of the wreck. Burton touched the airvalve, the bubbles hissed up. The head neevr moved. Something else did. A huge fish, tiger-striped, darted past the cavern. Burton glimpsed the opening of rounded jaws, the gleam of many teeth that snapped—and head and tail of the striped fish floated down towards him.

Burton reflected that these brute fish must be scared of him; the div-ing-dress made him a hideous monster, too. What he did not know was that this cruellest of things the breathe cared not at all for hideousness. He did not know that certain dangerous sea-things were not afraid of him, but that they were wary of two long slender things that stretched up to the unknown, far above him; the air-line and life-line appeared like endless tentacles that might envelop its prey in a trap. It was the “tentacles” that dangerous fish were afraid of. Burton let those big eyes watch him, because he could not prevent them. Far away, he could hear a great heart beating, never missing its throbbing pulse. It was warmly companionable, the throb of that air-pump coming from the cutter’s deck. He peered below his feet and guessed that all hope of treasure was gone. The bottom was almost certainly out of the wreck. Treasure chests, if any, must long ago have slipped down to the uttermost depths. This old ship’s shell-encrusted ribs were only held together by the marine growth that had spread over and between them. Then Burton stared amazed, for swimming—really swimming—came a fish of wonder colours, its scales flaming in phosphoric lights. It resembled a miniature ocean liner bathed in an electric glow skimming a black sea. Even at this depth he could plainly see the daintily shaped head with its great liquid eyes that stared so seriously. It disappeared and shone again; then flashed straight across a crevase and vanished. He drew a breath of disappointment as the water again closed solid Burton only sensed the shape of that fish, but vividly saw that growing up from its head there bent a supple rod over the snout which flashed a little rosy lamp—a lure for inquisitive prey.

Something came floating down through the vast crack above him. Like a broad, green blanket tasselled with gold sinking slowly through the depths it covered nearly the width of the huge crack and its masses of hairlike edges drooped prettily and wavered.

“A cloud must be over the sun,” thought Burton as he straightened up. Then the cloud softly enveloped him; its folds draped around him and closed him in caressingly but ardently, as if impelled by a dreadful love that would not be denied. He stood in utter darkness, not comprehending, his heart thumping louder than the airpump above. Then he grew aware of pressure, as if he were being squeezed by suddenly increased water-pressure. Fearfully his arms swung out, his clawing hands quite easily tore through a silken mane of hair just coolly damp. His arms swung again and went through quite freely, and again and again as he clumsily spun around. But he felt the pathways torn by his arms instantly filled up with a stronger seethe of something and sensed that soon it would demand toil to thrust his arms through this jelly-like hair wrapping ever more firmly around him. He felt his own hair bristling; his heart near bursting with horror. He struggled frantically, and the hair, slipping through his clawing hands, silkily caressed his fingers and felt reluctant to slip away. He paused, shuddering. How intensely dark! What a weight was closing around him, building him in! He was encased as if in wet cement that was fast setting. Trembling violently, he nerved himself to stand absolutely still and think. So many years of diving experience had taught him—what That now at two hundred feet he was at the greatest diving depths. Only slight exertion meant quick physical exhaustion. But to struggle—why that meant the brain must go almost immediately! Diver’s paralysis certainly. In every such case a cool head meant the only escape from a crisis. Gently his hand searched to his breast for the signal-cord. It pusned through the outer hair, which closed caressingly around his hand. It became appreciably ..harder to push through around the corslet; just like pushing through thickening cheese. His fingers spread and twisted as they tried to poke a way around the cord. Like claws they coiled around and dug an inch into the hair enwrapping the cord. It was compressing and becoming in turn harder to compress. His fingers closed, but it was as if around a stiff rubber tube. He could not close on the cord! ,

And the hairy mass was sqeezing around his wrist and forearm; he could feel his upper arm already enveloped, his fingers now were beinggripped as in thickening glue. He tried and tried to jerk. Just as his brain lost control he staggered through the plant-life down into the hold of the wreck and his weight stretched the cord.

They hauled him up, leaving him stationary at intervals, for they dare not haul him up straight away from that depth lest his blood burst. He did not answer their signals and they feared he might already be stricken by paralysis. But they did not see, as they hauled him up through the shallower water down which the sun’s rays shone, a cloth of gold-like finest seaweed quickly but without haste unwind from around him. It spread and grew until it was a dense blanket of gently waving hair. Then as if a thing of dreamy life, it floated, fringes prettily waving, down into the depths.