By this time I was so dazed and giddy with my submersion that I scarcely knew what I was about, and the horror of the two deaths before my eyes did not overcome me as it might have done had I been able to feel anything clearly. I knew the small man must be drowned: I guessed that the other was beyond help. I caught at the bigger man’s signal-line, knotted it together, and tugged furiously. Up on the Gertrude they felt it and began to haul. The two black monsters, with their gleaming eyes, went slowly up toward the shadow of the boat, dangling loose and limp as they rose.
“Sharks!” my mind kept saying to me. I looked fearfully round and round. The green wavering water was clear of all large shadows: no living torpedo, snout down, darted between me and the daylight. At my feet the serrated jaws of the terrible clam jutted slightly up from the coral cleft in which it lay; they were closed like a vise, and an end of shattered bone protruded from the middle.
I have always wondered that I was able to think as quickly and as clearly as I did, there at the bottom of the sea, with my mind dazed by unaccustomed pressure and shaken by the horrible tragedy that had just passed before my eyes. But I was quite certain of what I had to do. It was the Greek’s right arm that had been severed. The diamond, in its casing of grass, was in his hand as he fell. A thousand to one that diamond was inside the tridacna. I had got to get it out, and quickly—for two reasons—first, I could not stay down much longer, and secondly, nothing but a miracle could have kept the sharks away so long, with the smell of blood in the water.
The tridacna had been open when I came up. It would probably open again, as the morsel it had caught was scarcely in accordance with its ordinary food. When it opened, I must be ready with my ax, and strike as deep as possible into the yielding flesh, in the hope of hitting the great muscle that controlled the swinging of the valves. Should I miss that, I stood to lose the diamond, the ax, and not impossibly myself, for those giant shells as they closed might grab me as they had the Greek.
Well, I must hope not to miss. I poised the ax, and waited.
It must have been several minutes before any movement took place in the tridacna, but at last I saw the least possible gaping between the rows of tight-clinched scallops. The shells moved apart, slowly, slowly. Something gleamed between their separating edges—something that shot out rays of blue and green.
Was it the diamond? No! It was the tridacna itself.
Much as I had heard of these creatures, I had never heard anything of their beauty, and when I first saw it, it almost stunned me. From out the gates of those gigantic shells, as they opened more and more, came pouring forth the “mantle” of the fish, rising high above the marble edges of the shell, and trembling away in a cloud of glory several feet beyond. All the colors of a peacock flaunting in the sun were there: purples, violets, gold and green and blue, and, over all, the iridescent haze of the water, breaking into crumbled rainbows upon this miracle of unknown, unseen beauty.
I fairly gasped, it was so wonderful. Then, remembering myself, I bent as near the shell as I dared and looked for the ghastly relic it had seized. There was nothing to be seen but the gorgeous mantle itself. The murderous hand and its booty had alike disappeared.
I waited for a moment to collect myself, felt the blade of the ax to see that it was keen, poised it, and swung.