Martin twisted the ring until it caught the sun more evenly before he spoke.
“In the Red Sea,” he finally replied.
“Sounds like somethin’ back of it,” persisted Rio.
“There is.” Martin locked his hands around one knee and leaned forward in an attitude of tenseness. “The year before I met you, Rio, I got hurt on the old Silver Cross. She’s being scrapped now, and this was when she made her last trip to the East. I was pretty bad in the Indian Ocean, and the weather didn’t help any. I was worse at Aden; and they had to take me off at Massaua. When I was getting well I met a fellow named Nahrinja who was agent for a man who owned a pearl-fishing fleet. I wanted to get out on one of the boats to see how the boys went about it. So when I was better he gave me a knock-down to one of the Arab skippers and we set out.
“The Sudanese divers all seemed to like me, for I took to their native lute as though I’d played it all my life. In a few days I could do their ancient chants on the tamboura—somehow, understanding this sad, lost music. One Sudanese in particular, a boy named Sali, used to squat silently on the deck and watch me by the hour.
“We were after the finest pearl—the bilbil. And one morning Sali and I launched his dugout and piled in, the natives laughing a good deal, for I wasn’t used to their tipsy little pirogues. I paddled, while Sali looked through a glass-bottomed box for a good spot. When he found it, he went over the side with a weight to a depth of forty or fifty feet, while I watched through the box to see if he was all right and kept a lookout for shark. I had tried it once, myself, in shallower water and had got nicely stung by a poison fish for my efforts. Sali had many such scars and seemed used to it. But he told me to be careful of the giant clams, careful of the coral and particularly leery of the whip-tail ray, which can give you a bad cut with their barb.
“Sali worked more than he should; but he brought back good oyster. I was having a hell of a good time in spite of the stinks, and looked like one of the divers with my loincloth and my skin crusted with salt. Then it happened.” Martin looked at his ring again and continued.
“Sali had just left the ocean bed when I saw a black fin circle the bow of the boat. From his back, the shark was a big one. I began smacking the water with an iron pole, trying to frighten him away or attract his attention to the other side of the dugout, and to warn Sali, who was coming up fast.
“But just as the boy hit the surface, the shark struck him and Sali’s head went under. I jumped over the side and got him by the hair. When I brought him above water and could see his face, it looked as though it were frozen. He didn’t say anything or make any effort, and I couldn’t get him in the canoe; but when I clamped his hand on the gunwhale he held to it like a child, and I climbed into the boat by the stern, hoping the beast wouldn’t come back till I’d pulled the lad in. Finally, I got him by the wrist and managed to haul him in without capsizing. He looked down at his body at the place where his leg had been, for it was off high up next the hip. Then he looked at me and smiled, while two big tears ran down his cheeks.” Martin stopped again and choked. “I hope, Rio, it was because he was shocked out of his wits. I stripped off my loincloth and tried, as only a desperate man can do, to get a tourniquet around a place where I didn’t even have a stub to work on. At last, I started to shove my fist up the hole where the blood was spurting; and then, realizing that I was going mad myself, I grabbed a paddle and headed for the mother-boat like a demon. A pretty picture, eh, Rio?” said Martin bitterly. “A naked white man, as bloody by this time as the Sudanese, racing through the Red Sea with a dying boy who thought I could make him live—for that was what he kept saying all the time.”
“Cut it,” said Rio, his face hard. “Did you get him to the boat alive?”