It was awful to see them struggling and reeling and gripping at each other, there at the bottom of the sea, where a tangled life-line or a nipped air-tube meant certain death
It was awful to see them struggling and reeling and gripping at each other—there at the bottom of the sea, where a tangled life-line or a nipped air-tube meant certain death. The silence—the muffled, stifled silence of the deep—made the horror more horrible yet. It was like a struggle of lost souls among the shades.
I made my way as close as I dared, keeping my life-line and air-tube well out of the way, and snatched at the arm of the nearest diver. But in the unfamiliar medium of the water I missed; and the fight went on, the two dark monsters, with their round metal heads and hideous huge glass eyes, dodging, slipping, striking.... I saw now, with a thrill of horror, that both were using their knives, or trying to. They had an immense advantage over me, in being accustomed to the water; they moved easily where I could hardly stir for fear of losing my balance. Something, however, had to be done. I flung myself forward anyhow, and made another snatch at the reeling figures. Crunch went the coral under my feet, and I went down right into the black crevasse.
I caught my signal-line, and hauled as I fell. They were doing their duty upon the Dawn: my tender answered with a sturdy haul that sent me swinging toward the surface again. I signaled “Lower,” and they let me down. But the swing had carried me a little way from the scene of the fight.
With a horrible fear thumping at my heart, I flapped and stumbled forward through the wavering green.... I was too late.
The biggest diver had got one home at last. As I came up he sheathed his knife in the dress of the other and ripped it up; out came a fearful rush of silvery air, and the wretched creature, drowning, kicked and struggled, and snatched wildly at its signal-line, which I now saw had been cut.
The other man drove his hand into the gap in the dress, tore out a small brown object dangling on a string, and jumped backward out of the way of his grasping, struggling victim. In the jump he fell, and instantly the water vibrated to an iron clang that struck my helmet like a shot. He was caught in something; he fought terribly to be loose; from his imprisoned arm spread out a sudden cloud of brilliant red.
“Sharks! Blood brings sharks!” was the thought that beat upon my brain, as I flapped forward to give him help. Dulled as my senses were by the pressure of the sea, what I saw nearly drove me out of my mind with horror. A tridacna had got him.
It was set in a hole of the coral, its two fearful zigzag edges lying almost even with the surrounding level. It had been gaping open until the diver fell back upon it, and the clang that had struck upon my helmet was the sound of its ponderous shells, each some quarter ton in weight, slamming shut. The arm of the diver had been snapped and crushed between the edges: even as I looked, he fell back, the last rag of flesh tearing away. The tridacna had nipped off the limb like a carrot.