(原版)澳大利亞語文第六冊 LESSON 33

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LESSON 33 THE DIVER AND THE TURTLE

THE DIVER AND THE TURTLE

I

Now, said Johnson, the diver, "I think I'll give you a little yarn about a tussle I had with a turtle in the Sulu [1] waters. I fancy there isn't much that grows but you'll find it somewhere in Borneo; and the water there is just as full of life as the land."

Sharks? I queried.

Oh, worse than sharks! replied Johnson. "There's a big squid that will squirt the water black as ink; and just then, perhaps, something comes along and grabs you when you can't defend yourself. And there's the devil fish, own cousin to the squid, and the meanest enemy you'd want to run across anywhere. And there's a tremendous giant of a shell-fish—a kind of scalloped [2] clam, that lies with its huge shells wide open, but half-hidden in the long weeds and sea-mosses. If you put your foot into that trap, snap ! it closes on you, and you're fast. That clam is a good deal stronger than you are; and if you have not a hatchet or something to smash the shell with, you are likely to stay there. Of course, your partner in the boat up aloft would soon know something was wrong when he could not haul you up. Then he would go down after you, and chop you loose perhaps."

You can hardly blame the clam, said I. "It must be rather a shock to its nerves when it feels a big foot thrust down right upon its stomach!"

No, assented Johnson; "you can't blame the clam. But, besides the clam, there is a big turtle that is a most officious [3] creature, with a beak that will almost cut railroad iron. It is for ever poking that beak into whatever it thinks it doesn't know all about; and you cannot scare it as you can a shark. You must kill it before it will acknowledge itself beaten. And then, as you say, there are the sharks—all kinds, big and little, for ever hungry, but not half as courageous as people think."

I suppose, I interrupted, "you always carried a weapon of some sort."

Well, rather! said Johnson. "For my own part I took a great fancy to the ironwood stakes that the natives always use, so I made myself a stake with a steel top. More than one big shark have I settled with that hand-spike of mine; and once I found, to my great advantage, that it was just the thing with which to break up a shell."

Ha, ha! laughed Best, who had been listening rather inattentively hitherto [4] . "So you put your foot in it, did you?"

Yes, I did, said Johnson. "And that is just what I am going to tell you about. I was working that season with a good partner, a likely young fellow hailing from Auckland. He attended to the line and the pump to my complete satisfaction. I've never had a better tender. His name was Larry Scott.

One morning, as I was poking about among the seaweed and stuff, I came across a fine-looking bunch of pearl-shells. I made a grab at them, but they were firmly rooted and refused to come away. I laid down my hand-spike, took hold of the cluster with both hands, and shifted my foothold so as to get a good chance to pull.

Up came the bunch of shells at the first wrench, much more readily than I had expected. To recover myself I took a step backward; down went my foot into a crevice [5] , "slumped" into something soft, and snap ! my leg was fast in a grip that almost made me yell there in the little prison of my helmet.

Well, as you may imagine, just as soon as I recovered from the start this gave me, I reached out for my hand-spike to knock that clam-shell into atoms. But a cold shiver went over me as I found I could not reach the weapon! As I laid it down, it had slipped a little to one side; and there it rested about a foot out of my reach, reclining on one of those twisted coach-shells such as the farmers use for dinner-horns.

How I jerked on my leg trying to pull it out of the trap! That, however, only hurt the leg. All the satisfaction I could get was in the thought that my foot, with its big twenty-pound rubber-and-lead boot, must be making the clam's internal affairs rather uncomfortable. After I had tired myself out, stretching and tugging on my leg, and struggling to reach the hand-spike, I paused to recover my wind and consider the situation.

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[1] Sulu: An island off the coast of Borneo.

[2] scalloped: Edged with a series of round projections.

[3] officious: Fussy, self-important.

[4] hitherto: Up to now.

[5] crevice: crack.