Roy J. Snell

“ Life was not half bad after all.
Half an hour later he was experiencing such thrills as only the deep, deep sea could bring. Some five hundred feet beneath the surface of the sea he sat doubled up in his place, staring at an ever changing panorama. A rocky wall, not twenty feet from him, stood up like a sky-scraper, straight and tall. Here and there it was broken by fissures and caves. Everywhere it was festooned with sea vegetation—seaweed, kelp, anemones. All these, with coral that rose like Gothic architecture, were entrancing.
Dave was by his side—not to admire, but to record. ”

“ Night was falling on the waters of the blue Caribbean when Johnny and Samatan finally reached the Sea Nymph, and were told of the sub’s predicament. For a full hour after darkness fell, Doris and Johnny sat on the after deck. But they spoke hardly a word. They were thinking of a brave, American girl, two hundred feet below surface, in a foreign submarine.
“Johnny!” Doris gripped the boy’s arm suddenly. “Is that a light—or is it a star?” She pointed out to sea.
“A light! No, it’s a star. No! No! It is a light! See! It blinks!”
“Dave!” Doris called. “The navy is coming!” ”

“ When a piece of driftwood—the broken side of a native dugout—came floating in, Mildred turned away with a shudder, her thoughts on Johnny.
Having wandered into the jungle a short distance she stopped suddenly to stare at the trunk of a tree. There, standing out against the smooth gray bark, was a small, green arrow!
“Doris!” she called. “Come here!”
“Green arrow!” Doris exclaimed, reaching Mildred’s side. “What do you suppose it means?” she whispered.
“It’s a trail marker!” said Mildred. “There should be others. Come on!” ”

“ Johnny sighed in relief as they reached the end of a narrow pass. That, he thought, would have been a bad place to be caught. His sense of relief was short-lived, however, for out from the wide door of the ancient castle, burst a man with a rifle. Instantly Johnny recognized him as the man whom he had saved from the grip of the octopus.
“Come on!” he exclaimed, as the man leveled his rifle. A shot cracked out, and a bullet burned Johnny’s cheek. Next instant the man dodged and the rifle clattered from his nerveless hands. There had been a flash of steel, as Samatan had thrown his machete. ”

“ A whale? A blackfish? Or some strange, unknown denizen of the deep? Suppose at this instant it should become enraged, should rush out of its hiding place and drag the steel ball out into the deep—to send it crashing against the rocky wall? A broken window would mean instant death. And yet Johnny’s hand did not tremble as he adjusted his camera....
Just after the steel ball had gone over the side, Mildred Kennedy, in her dugout canoe, had arrived for a visit. It had called for real courage, this little journey. From a distance these Sea Nymph people had seemed so serious. All but Johnny. ”

“ My nerves are jumpy tonight.”
A whole succession of small, dark clouds, high in the heavens, had been passing before the moon. One moment the deck was white with moonlight; the next, it was dark as the deep sea.
Johnny laughed softly, and found it helped steady him. Taking another turn ’round the steel ball, he walked past the open top of the tank in which the giant, sea-green octopus was kept. As he came alongside, there was a sudden splash—as if the creature had thrown out a long arm and allowed it to drop. It gave him a real start. ”

“ Johnny laughed right out loud when at last the old man took off his soft, loose shoes, gripped the ropes with his toes and began steering with his feet.
Two delightful hours passed. Then the dugout slid up on a sandy shore.
When the boat had been pulled up, Samatan’s eyes scanned the sandy beach. Suddenly he went racing away and, with the silence and speed of a great cat, stole up on an unsuspecting turtle, basking in the sand. A quick leap—and the turtle lay on its back, a prisoner.
“Food,” said the old man. “Much food from the sea. But,” he added quietly, “we take only what we need.” ”

“ Their large dugout was loaded with all manner of tropical fruits—bananas, pineapples, wild oranges and mangoes.
“What a life,” Johnny murmured, as the natives drifted past. He thought of the conditions of thousands of persons in the great cities of America—then looked out again at that boatload of people. It would be grand, he thought, to live here forever. And yet, there were the spies, and debts to those Europeans.
“Debts,” he sighed, “that haunt them till they die.”
Doris came on deck. “You just can’t sleep on such a night!” she sighed. ”

“ They are slaves—those people—slaves! If we don’t watch out we’ll be slaves, too!... Look at this Caribbean Sea! More important than the Mediterranean ever was! And who’s to stop them from taking possession of these islands? Why, even the president of this poor little Republic is in debt to them! Up to his ears!”
Was Kennedy right? Johnny wondered, dreamily. What of that signal up there on the ridge—the signal of the green arrow? Was it operated by spies? And if so—what had they been saying with those blinking lights? What—
“Penny for your thoughts!” Mildred was back. ”

“ That there was to be a race against time with their lives as a grand prize, Johnny realized at once. Here they were, several hundred feet down in the black depths of the sea, drifting at a fairly rapid rate toward a rocky wall. If they hit that wall? He shuddered at the thought. The pressure of water at that depth was tremendous. If the ball cracked, nothing could save them.
“Is there anything at all we can do?” he asked Dave.
“Not a thing, I guess,” Dave answered. Then, “Yes! Yes, there might be, at that! There are the levers! They are outside the ball and can be worked from within! ”

“ Dave and the professor had gone ashore to study tropical bird life, so after the evening meal, Johnny and Doris sat on deck watching the play of phosphorescent creatures beneath the surface of the sea.
“This,” said Johnny, “is my day off. Tonight I sleep. Tomorrow old Samatan and I are going for a sail in a large dugout, to visit some coral reefs.”
Doris smoothed back her thick, golden hair, fixed her bright blue eyes on him, and said: “Why?”
“We need him for a friend,” Johnny replied, quietly. “If he is with us—all the native crew will be, too. He’s a leader.” ”

“ The old man’s voice was vibrant with emotion.
“They say Kennedy has had bad done him! Natives must come. All who love Kennedy must come. And all natives love Kennedy! All night they must come. In morning they march—perhaps they fight! Much fight for Kennedy! Maybe much die!” His voice trailed off.
“Yes,” Johnny choked. “Something terrible has happened. We must go, Samatan!”
“Just when it little light, in my dugout, we go, Johnny,” said Samatan, quietly. ”

“ The inside surface was polished to the last degree, and the seats were braided, cocoanut fibre. On the prow, carved in the most perfect manner, was the wooden image of a seagull.
All unknown to Johnny, Samatan was keeping an eye on him. His keen old mind read the boy’s thought like a book. One lover of a sailboat recognizes another, and since his tenth birthday, Johnny had been an ardent sailboat enthusiast. At that age he had rigged up a square sail for a rowboat and had known many happy hours on the water. ”

“ The girl drew in her breath sharply, eyeing the distant shadow of the huge sphere.
“Sure, in the steel ball! He’d like to! He’s proud of it. And he likes showing people strange things. If you want someone to do a certain thing for you—ask him to do something else, first! That’s a grand rule.” Johnny looked into the girl’s frank, grey eyes, and decided he liked her. ”

“ Old Samatan was not asleep. He was only thinking. After a time he opened his eyes wide, to stare at the dark shore where drums still beat out their message.
“Make wanga,” he said to Johnny. “Always when trouble, my people make wanga—make prayer to Voodoo gods. Gods help good natives win victories.”
“Great!” exclaimed Johnny. “Then we shall win!”
“Yes. Win,” the old man said, softly.
Then Johnny told Samatan of the green arrow trail that Mildred had said she would follow. He told of the suddenly broken message he had picked up from the green arrow. ”

“ A burly black fellow swung at me with a machete!”
“Nothing like that down there,” Dave chuckled. “All the same—you’ll be surprised! Do you want to go?”
“Sure—I’ll go,” Johnny agreed. “Only,” he hesitated, “I have a strange horror of being completely out of touch with the rest of the world! What do we do about that?”
[24]
“That’s easy!” Dave laughed. “We have a short-wave set on the boat and another in the steel ball. Doris or the professor is always listening in. How about it—do we go?”
“We sure do!” Johnny grinned.
“O.K.! Get your stuff together. We’ll go down in an hour!” ”

“ Look!” He held up the exquisitely wrought knife. “Do you think a native would have such a gem of a knife? Not a chance!
“Then—there’s the green arrow to prove he’s a spy!” Johnny went on. “One of the messages I spelled out by using their code read: ‘Board them. Discover all you can.’”
“But why?” said Doris. “We’re not secret agents.”
“That’s what they don’t know! We are Americans—and they don’t want us around.”
“Know what?” Johnny continued, “I believe that big thing that glides through the water—the thing we saw today—is a submarine!” ”

“ Anything may put in an appearance. Creatures such as the world never has dreamed of, may pass before our eyes!”
“How strange! How sort of—”
Johnny broke off to stare, then to exclaim—“There—there’s something huge!”
“Quick! The camera!” Dave’s voice trembled. “No—it’s too late!”
[30]
Moving with surprising swiftness, some great, dark bulk passed through the outer edge of their narrow beam of light.
“Wha—what was it?” Johnny felt a little giddy.
“Some huge creature of the deep. Perhaps a whale or a black fish,” Dave replied quietly. “It is known that they penetrate to these depths. ”

“ Never in all her life had she been so thrilled, and so frightened. Curled up inside the sturdy metal sphere, she went down—down—down, into the mysterious depths of the ocean. The light from the quartz window seemed bright blue, yet she experienced trouble in distinguishing small objects within the ball.
The creatures outside the window were strange beyond belief. Here a great school of blue fish shot past. There a six-foot monster with waving tail sped on in swift pursuit of smaller fry. And a group of small, dark, crab-like creatures wriggled their way across the scene. ”

“ Sailing from island to island, they had taken pictures of quaint, native homes, of native women with flashing eyes, of ancient buccaneer cannon, fast rusting to nothingness. There had been three exciting fights, with men who had thought they were intruding. In one of these, a machete had come within a fraction of an inch of Johnny’s ear. He seemed to feel the cool swish of it now.
Then, he thought with a sigh, those golden days had ended. Lee Martin, the photographer, had been called back to New York.
“You keep the stuff,” Lee had said to Johnny. “You may be able to get some unusual pictures. ”

“ For ten minutes or more the two of them fought their way along the ridge. At last the native paused. “Here,” he said, “is most high. Trees. Must climb these—quick! Waves go all over coral reef!”
“Al—all right.” The rising gale blew Johnny’s words down his throat. Seizing the low branches of a large tree, he prepared to climb.
[141]
“No! That bad tree! No good!” said Samatan. “This one.”
Into Johnny’s mind at that moment came the words of the professor: “When I am in a strange land I do what a native will do—go where he goes. If he says ‘No go’—I stay.” ”

“ There were, he said, three trails to the ancient castle. They would divide into three groups. John Puleet, a stalwart native, with his followers, would circle the hill to the right. Teratella, another burly leader of the islanders, would go to the left with his men. Time would be given them to take their positions. When this had been done, a “wild parrot” would scream from the right, another from the left—and they would all move forward.
“We’ll take the trail straight ahead, with old Samatan,” he said to Johnny. “It’s the toughest of them all, if we are attacked.” ”