When the girls had put on dry clothing they led Captain Jules all over the houseboat, showing him each detail of it. He insisted that the “Merry Maid” was as trim a little craft as he had ever seen afloat.
After luncheon, at which the captain devoured six of Miss Jenny Ann’s best cornbread gems, he sat down in a chair on the houseboat deck, holding Tania in his arms. He talked most to Phyllis, but he seldom took his eyes off Madge’s face. Sometimes he frowned at her; now and then he smiled. Once or twice Madge found herself blushing and wondering why her rescuer looked at her so hard, but she was too interested to care very much.
She sat down in her favorite position on a pile of cushions on the deck, with her head resting against Miss Jenny Ann’s knee and her eyes on the water. “Do tell us, Captain Jules,” she pleaded, “something about your life as a pearl-fisher. You must have had wonderful experiences. We would dearly love to hear about them, wouldn’t we, girls?”
The girls chorused an enthusiastic “Yes,” which included Miss Jenny Ann.
Captain Jules laughed. “Haven’t you ever heard that it is dangerous to get an old sea dog started on his adventures? You never can tell when he will leave off,” he teased, stroking Tania’s black hair. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if Tania would like to hear how once I was nearly swallowed whole, diving suit and all, by a giant shark. I was hunting for pearls in those days off the Philippine Islands. I had been tearing some shells from the side of a great rock when, of a sudden, I felt a strange presence before I saw anything. I might have known it was time to expect trouble, because the little fish that are usually floating about in the water had all disappeared. A creepy feeling came over me. I was cold as ice inside my diving suit. Then I turned and looked up. Just a few feet in front of me was a giant shark that seemed about twenty-five feet long. He was an evil monster. The upper part of his body was a dirty, dark green and his fins were black. You never saw a diving suit, did you? So you don’t know that all the body is covered up but the hands. I tucked my hands under my breastplate in a hurry. It didn’t seem to me that a pearl diver would be much good without any hands. Well, the great fish made a sweep with its tail, and in a jiffy he and I were face to face. I stood still for about a second. I held my breath, my heart pounding like a hammer. Nearer and nearer the monster came swimming toward me, with its shovel nose pointing directly at the glass that covered my face. I couldn’t stand it. I threw up my hands. I yelled way down at the bottom of the sea with no one to hear me. There was a swirl of water, a cloud of mud, and my enemy vanished. He didn’t like the noise any better than I liked him.”
The girls breathed sighs of relief. The captain chuckled. “Oh, a diver is not in real danger from a shark,” he went on, “his suit protects him. But there are plenty of other dangers. Maybe I’ll tell you some of them at another time. Why, I declare, it is nearly sunset. You don’t know it, children, but the bottom of the tropic sea has colors in it as beautiful as the lights in that sky. The sea-bottom, where the diver is apt to find pearl shells, is covered with all sorts of sea growths—sponges twelve feet high, coral cups like inverted mushrooms, sea-fans twenty feet broad.”
As the old diver talked, the girls could see the magic coral wreaths, glowing rose color and crimson, the tall ferns and sea flowers that waved with the movement of the water as the earth flowers move to the stirring of the wind. And there in the land of the mermaids, hidden between wonderful shells of mother-of-pearl, lie the jewels that are the purest and most beautiful in the world.
Madge’s chin was in her hands. She did not hear the old captain get up and say good-bye. She was wishing, with all her heart, that she, too, might go down to the bottom of the sea to view its treasures.
“Madge,” Phil interrupted her reverie, “Captain Jules is going.”
Madge put her soft, warm hands into the big man’s hard, powerful ones. “Good-bye,” she said gratefully. “There is something I wish to tell you, but I won’t until another time.”