THE RIVALS AND THE DEVIL FISH

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20587, 28 November 1936, Page 10 (Supplement)

THE RIVALS AND THE DEVIL FISH

(Continued from Previous Page) set of lines, gliding off to nuzzle the other, then leisurely circling both se’s as if uncertain which to play with. It slipped between the men and the clear world above, this bat-like monster its terrible eyes glancing at the motionless things below. They felt as the benumbed mouse must feel before the spring of a cat; waiting, not for the pounce, but for a sickening jerk and the tearing away of the air-pipes. The fish glided above and delicately nosed the life-lines, its blanket-like flippers undulating with a slow motion which flashed a whiteness underneath, instantly swallowed in the blackness of the beating flippers.

Billy’s rival, with the hope of one man moving his lines from the impending tangle so that he might be able to help the other in a crisis, started crab-edging away. His signal cord brushed the manoeuvring fish. Startled at the contact, its flat bulk flashed around straight between both sets of lines. These tickled the spreading wings and it back-kicked in a rolling somersault. Fearful now of what it did not understand, its horns engaged both sets of lines and it bolted in a furious swirl. The alarmed tenders in the luggers above jumped o make fast their respective lines, while the flapping fish, jerked suddenly, aback, pivoted in terror. Two sets of lines caught within its horns had completely upset its calculations. The divers were carried off their feet to swing in water like children, clinging to the ropes in a maypole dance, the circle of their swing drawing rapidly narrower as the lines twisted into one strand.

Billy hoped lor a quick death while he prayed frantically for life. Disturbed sand blotted vision from the face-glass. He thudded into something solid, and gripped, and was gripped m turn. He sensed that he was staring into the face-glass of his one-time rival. The twisted diving-line had the men locked together in mid-water. Would the fish bolt again and, snapping the lines, deposit them in some bottomless pit of the sea- Billy’s sick mind wirelessed a halcyon vision of how heavenly it would be to lie dead in the clear sunlight above. If the luggers could only haul them up! The startled tenders were battling with every ounce of man-power at their command. But the weight of both entangled divers, added to a ton or more of fish, plus the enormously increased weight of its frantic wallowings, was a strain which no divinggear has been built to stand. The very struggles of the fish gave the men life. The jamming of the pipes between its horns cut off the airsupply, and pain roared into the ears of the divers. Then an inevitable dislocation of the gear occurred, and excess air poured down into the divingdresses. Their roomy proportions becoming inflated, the men commenced co rise. The fish, feeling the slackening at the bottom end of this dread thing that had trapped him. instantly bolted upward, then down on a long slope. He was brought dead up with a jerk that threw him a clean head-on somersault. His horns slipped from the twisted strands and he shot out for the depths. Released air hissed into the divingdresses, though the dizzy men did not know it. To the luggers, their divers emerged from the depths like bloated toads but feet first, grotesquely interlocked in one another’s arms. The crews sprang overboard to help jn upending the tangle, and get the helpless mass aboard. “She’s my girl!” gasped Billy as his face-glass was unscrewed. “Liar!” denied the other in a subdued voice. Copyright.