Книга - The Amphibian / Человек-амфибия. Книга для чтения на английском языке

The Amphibian / Человек-амфибия. Книга для чтения на английском языке
Александр Романович Беляев


Russian Classic Literature
Alexander Belyaev is one of the founders of Russian science fiction literature and the first of the Soviet writers to devote himself entirely to this genre. In all, he has written more than 70 science fiction works, including 17 novels. For a significant contribution to Russian fiction and his visionary ideas, Belyaev is often called the "Russian Jules Verne."The Amphibian is a science fiction novel written in 1927 and first published in 1928. Fishermen and pirates of Buenos Aires are frightened – a mysterious "sea devil" appeared in the sea. However, a cold-blooded businessman Pedro Zurita, the owner of the crew of pearl-divers, decides to catch the mysterious creature and adapt it to his business. This creature with both lungs and gills of a shark is actually a young man named Ichthyander, the result of Doctor Salvator's bold experiments with organ transplantation. One day, Ichthyander rescues a girl drowning in the sea – Gutierrez, the adoptive daughter of Baltasar, one of Zurita's assistants…





Alexander Belyaev / Александр Беляев

The Amphibian / Человек-амфибия. Книга для чтения на английском языке





© КАРО, 2018





From the Publishers


The Amphibian will throw you back to a time when skin and deep-sea diving had not yet made the Silent World begin yielding up its secrets on a really big scale, as aqualung and snorkel are doing today, and present to you Alexander Belyaev’s 1928 prevision of the ocean mastered by mankind.

Sea-devil has appeared in the Rio de la Plata. Weird cries out at sea, slashed fishermen’s nets, glimpses of a most queer creature astride a dolphin leave no room for doubt. The Spaniard Zurita, greed overcoming his superstition, tries to catch Sea-devil and force it to pearl-dive for him but fails.

On a lonely stretch of shore, not far from Buenos Aires, Dr. Salvator lives in seclusion behind a high wall, whose steel-plated gates only open to let in his Indian patients. The Indians revere him as a god but Zurita has a hunch that the god on land and the devil in the sea have something in common. Enlisting the help of two wily Araucanian brothers he sets out to probe the mystery.

As action shifts from the bottom of the sea to the Spaniard’s schooner The Jellyfish and back again, with interludes in sun-drenched Buenos Aires and the countryside, the mystery of Ichthyander the sea-devil is unfolded before the reader in a narrative as gripping as it is informative.

Alexander Belyaev, the first-and very nearly the best-Soviet science-fiction writer, was born in 1884 in Smolensk. When a little boy Alexander was full of ideas. One of them was to fly. And he did fly – from a rooftop – until one day he fractured his spine. This was put right, but at the age of 32 he developed bone tuberculosis and was bed-ridden for nearly six years and later for shorter stretches.

After school he studied law and music. To pay for his tuition he played in an orchestra, designed stage settings and did free lance journalism, which he continued after graduation. In 1925 he gave up law and devoted himself wholly to writing.

His first novel, Professor Dowell’s Head, serialized in a popular magazine in 1926, was an immediate success. Since then A. Belyaev wrote fifty-odd novels – many of them as topical as if written today – reaching the one-million copy mark by January 1942 when he died near Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). His best known books are The Amphibian, A Jump into Nothingness and The Island of Dead Ships.




Part I





“The Sea-Devil”


The close night of the Argentine midsummer came down on the sea. Stars pricked out in a sky that was a deep violet. The schooner Jellyfish lay quietly at anchor, with not a splash round her, not a creak on board. Ship and ocean seemed in deep slumber.

Half-naked pearl-divers sprawled on the deck. Worn out by the day’s work under a parching sun they tossed and groaned and cried out in their nightmarish sleep. Their limbs would jerk and twitch; perhaps they were fighting off sharks – their deadly enemies. The hot windless weather of which they were having a spell made people so tired that they couldn’t even hoist the boats on board at the end of a day’s work. Not that it seemed necessary: nothing indicated a change in weather. So the boats were left afloat, made fast to the anchor chain. Nobody had thought of tightening the shrouds or sheeting home the jib which fluttered faintly at each stray whiff of wind. From bowsprit to taffrail the schooner was strewn with heaps of pearl shells, pieces of coral, lengths of diving cord, canvas sacks for putting shells in and empty barrels.

Against the mizzen-mast stood a big water barrel with an iron mug on a chain. The deck immediately round was stained dark with spilt water.

Every now and then a diver struggled up and staggered along, sleep-drunk, to the water barrel. Never opening his eyes he swallowed a mugful and dropped down anywhere on his way back, as if it were not water he had drunk but neat spirit. The divers were always thirsty. They went without morning meals, for underwater pressure made diving on a full stomach dangerous, so they worked without eating all through the day, till it grew too dark underwater. They had their meal before turning in-and that was of salt meat.

The Indian Baltasar, right hand of the schooner’s owner Pedro Zurita, had the night watch.

In his time Baltasar had been known far and wide as an excellent pearl-diver. He could stay underwater for as much as a minute and a half or even two minutes which was about twice as long as an average diver.

“How did we do it? They knew how to train in my day and started early,” Baltasar would say to the young divers.

“Just turned ten I was. My father took me to Jose, who owned a tender, for training. There were twelve of us, all kids like me. And this is the way he trained us. He’d throw a white pebble or shell into the water and order one of us to go and get it. And each time he found deeper and deeper places. If one of us had nothing to show for his diving Jose’d give him a lash or two of his whip and shove Mm overboard to try again. And it worked. Then he started to train us to keep longer times underwater. An experienced diver’d go down and make a basket or piece of netting fast to the anchor chain. Then down we went to untie the knots. And we weren’t allowed to come up before all the knots were undone. If we did we got the whip again.

“The amount of beating we took! Not everybody could stick it out. But it made a diver out of me-and the best in the district. And earned me a pretty penny too.”

Then the time had come when Baltasar had to give up the hazardous trade of a pearl-diver. He was no longer young and his left leg bore the terrible scars of a shark’s teeth and his side the marks of an anchor chain. He bought a small shop in Buenos Aires and started a trade in pearls, corals, shells and sea curios. But shore life bored him and once in a while he decided he needed a break and put out to sea with pearl-divers.

He was always sure of a welcome, for what he didn’t know about the Rio de la Plata and its pearling grounds was just not worth knowing. He was welcomed by all-he knew how to please divers and owners alike. The young divers he taught the tricks of the trade: how to hold their breath underwater and to fight off sharks, and-when in specially expansive mood-how to keep an extra fine pearl out of the boss’s sight.

The owners he helped to sort out pearls and evaluate the best.

Baltasar was sitting on an upturned barrel, a thick cigar between his fingers, his face picked out of the darkness by the light of a lantern fixed to the mast. It was an elongated face with a finely cut nose and large handsome eyes – the face of an Araucanian. He was drowsing. But even when his eyes were asleep, his ears were not. They registered sounds and gave him warning in the deepest of sleep. There was nothing but the divers’ sighing and murmuring to hear. The smell of rotting pearl oysters wafted from offshore. It was part of the job: the shell of a dead mollusc opens more easily. What would have been an overpowering stench for an unaccustomed nose was near perfume for Baltasar’s. For him, a sea tramp that he was it meant all the pleasures and dangers of life at sea.

After the last pearl was extracted the largest shells were brought on board the Jellyfish. Zurita wasn’t one to let anything go to waste. He sold the shells to a factory where they made buttons and studs out of them.


* * *

Baltasar was asleep. The cigar had slipped from between his fingers. His chin rested on his chest.

A sound from far out at sea broke in on his sleep. Then it came nearer. Baltasar opened his eyes. What seemed to him the blast of a horn sounded again, followed by the cheerful ring of a young voice, repeated after an interval in a higher pitch.

The blast of the horn bore no resemblance to the harsh blare of ship’s siren, nor the cheerful voice to the cries of a man, fallen overboard. In fact it didn’t sound like anything Baltasar could think of. He rose. His sleep seemed blown away by a breeze. He went up to the rail and peered into darkness. His eye and ear detected nothing. Baltasar prodded with his foot a sleeping Indian into wakefulness.

“I heard a cry. That must be him,” he told the diver softly.

“I can’t hear a thing,” the Gurona Indian, now up on his knees and listening, said as softly. Suddenly the horn and voice pierced the heavy silence again.

The Gurona shrank as from a whip lash.

“Yes, that’s him,” he said through his clattering teeth.

Other divers were waking up. They crawled towards the blotch of lantern light as though seeking in the yellowish beam protection from dreadful darkness. There they squatted, huddling together and straining their ears. The horn and voice came from far off again and was heard no more.

“That’s him-the ‘sea-devil’,” the divers were whispering.

“We ought to be clearing out of here.”

“A shark’s a kitten compared to him! “

“Let’s speak to the boss.”

There was a patter of bare feet. Yawning and scratching a hairy chest Pedro Zurita came on deck. A pair of canvas trousers was all he had on; a revolver holster dangled from a broad leather belt. Zurita approached the divers. The lantern light revealed a swarthy face, crumpled with sleep, curls of thick hair escaping onto the forehead, black eyebrows, a pointed moustache and greying goatee.

“What’s up?”

His self-assured voice and deliberate movements calmed the divers.

They spoke all at once.

Baltasar raised a hand to silence them.

“We’ve heard him-the ‘sea-devil’,” he said when order was termporarily restored.

“You dreamt it,” Pedro said sleepily.

“We didn’t. We all heard his horn,” shouted the divers.

Again Baltasar waved them to silence.

“I heard the horn myself. That was him all right. There’s nobody at sea can blow a horn like that. We ought to be getting away from here, and lose no time about it.”

“Old wives’ tales,” said Pedro Zurita. He didn’t like the idea of sailing from the pearling ground with all those oysters on board, stinking and still not ready for opening. But it was like running his head against a stone wall, trying to talk the divers into staying. They shouted discordantly, flung their arms about and threatened to abandon the schooner and walk to Buenos Aires if Zurita didn’t weigh anchor.

“Curse you and the ‘sea-devil’,” he said finally. “You win. Well weigh anchor at dawn.” And grumbling and cursing he went below.

He was no longer sleepy. Lighting the lamp he got a cigar going and began pacing up and down his small cabin. His thoughts turned to the mysterious creature that had been haunting their part of the estuary for some time now, striking terror into the fishermen and seaside villagers.

Sailors and fishermen would tell tales about it, with many a timid glance over the shoulder, as if afraid that the monster might surprise them even as they spoke about it.

The creature was believed to have helped some people and harmed others.

“It’s the sea-god,” said the older Indians, “him as comes out of the ocean once in a thousand years – to restore justice on earth.”

The Catholic priests exhorted their superstitious Spanish flock to seek salvation in religion, saying that the sea-monster was a visitation of the wrath of God for their neglect of the Holy Catholic Church.

Rumours spread and at last reached Buenos Aires. For weeks the “sea-devil” made headlines in the sensation-hungry press. Any unaccounted-for loss of schooner or fishing-craft, any theft of nets or fish catch were all the “sea-devil’s” doing. But there were other stories as well-of big fish mysteriously deposited in fishing boats, of men saved from drowning.

At least one of these swore that when he was going under for the last time somebody caught him from behind and sped him shorewards and onto the beach, disappearing behind the surf the very moment he struggled to his feet and looked back.

Nobody had seen the “sea-devil” or rather nobody was credited with having seen it. Though, of course, there were some who called heaven to witness that the creature had a head adorned with horns and a goat’s beard, the legs of a lion and the tail of a fish or described it as an enormous toad with legs shaped like a man’s.

At first the authorities paid no attention to all these rumours and newspaper articles, hoping for the sensation to fizzle out as newspaper sensations do. But rumours led to apprehension and apprehension to alarm, especially among the fishermen. They were afraid to put out to sea; catches declined; Buenos Aires was experiencing a shortage of fish. The authorities decided it was time to intervene. A force of coastguard cutters and police launches was mustered and given orders “to detain a person of unknown identity that is causing alarm and panic among the seaside population.”


* * *

For a fortnight the task force combed the Rio de la Plata and the coast with nothing to their credit but several Indians detained for spreading rumours likely to cause alarm and panic.

The chief of the police issued an official announcement to the effect that the “devil” only existed in the rumours spread by some ignorant people, already detained and about to receive the punishment they deserved, and admonished the fishermen to scorn the rumours spread and resume their useful trade.

This helped for a time, but not for long: soon the “devil” was up to new pranks.

Some fishermen were wakened in the dead of night by the bleating of a kid that nothing short of magic could have put into their boat, lying as she was a goodish way offshore. Other fishermen hauled in their nets to find them slashed to pieces.

Overjoyed by the reappearance of the “devil” the newspapers now clamoured for the opinion of science. Nor had they to wait for long.

Scientists claimed that a sea-monster capable of intelligent acts could not exist in that part of the ocean unknown to science. They went on to say that this did not necessarily apply to greater ocean depths, though even there they would not expect to find such a monster. They tended to agree with the off-the-record opinion of the chief of the police who thought that some practical joker was at the bottom of it all.

But not all scientists shared that opinion. Some referred in their arguments to Konrad Hessner, world-famous naturalist, who left us descriptions of the sea-maiden, sea-devil, sea-monk and sea-bishop.

“When all is said and done many of the things propounded by ancient and medieval scientists have been borne out in our times for all modern science’s endeavours to ridicule them out of existence. Divine creation is truly inexhaustible and we scientists, more than anybody else, are called upon to practise modesty and caution in our conclusions,” they wrote.

These last apparently believed more in religion than in science and their lectures were more like homilies.

Finally a scientific expedition was equipped and dispatched to settle the scholarly wrangle.

The members of the expedition found no “devil” but they learned a great deal about the “unknown person’s” goings (the older members insisted that the word “person” be changed for the word “creature”).

The newspapers carried the expedition’s report, which said;

“1. In several places on the beaches we examined we found narrow footprints of a distinct human shape. Though leading from and back to the sea, they might have been made by people from boats.

“2. The nets we examined had cuts of the type produced by sharp instruments.

They might have been caught on sharp underwater crags or twisted metalwork of wrecks.

“3. A report – brought to our attention-of a dolphin that had been carried by a storm ashore, well clear of the water, and dragged back into the sea by someone who had left behind what looked like clawed footprints, has been carefully looked into.

“We are fully satisfied that the dolphin in question had been restored to its element by some kindhearted fisherman. Nor would this have been the only instance of kindness on the part of fishermen towards dolphins. It is common knowledge that dolphins in pursuit of fish sometimes help the fishermen in that they drive fish to the shallows inshore. The alleged claws of the footprints could have been the work of the witnesses’ imagination.

“4. The kid might have been brought by boat and slipped on board by some practical joker.”

The scientists had a lot more to say in their attempts to explain away the “devil’s doings”. They were convinced that no sea creature could have performed them.

But the scientists’ explanations did not satisfy everybody. They seemed insufficient even for some of the scientists. How could a practical joker-however resourceful and clever-keep dark his identity for so long? Yet what made the whole thing really baffling was that according to the expedition’s findings-incidentally not included in their report-the “devil” sometimes performed several tricks of his at short intervals in places situated very widely apart. Either the “devil” could travel at an unheard-of speed or there were several of them at work. And that made the practical joker idea altogether too thick to believe.

That was what went through Zurita’s mind as he paced up and down his cabin.

Dawn had come unnoticed and with it a pink beam of light, stealing through the port-hole. Pedro put out the lamp and started washing.

As he poured the tepid water over his head he heard cries of alarm coming from deck. Halfwashed, he hurried up the companion ladder.

Pressing to the rail on the seaward side of the schooner the divers in loin-cloths were gesticulating amid a tumult of voices. Pedro looked down. There were no boats where they had been the previous night. Apparently they had gone adrift somehow in the night off-shore breeze. Now the morning breeze was slowly bringing them shorewards. Their oars were afloat, scattered all over the bay.

Zurita ordered the divers to collect the boats. Nobody budged. Zurita repeated his order.

“Why don’t you go and try your own luck with the ‘devil’?” somebody said.

Zurita placed a hand on his holster. The divers fell back against the mast, glowering at Zurita. A showdown seemed inevitable. Then Baltasar stepped into the breach.

“There isn’t a thing will scare an Araucanian,” he said. “A shark didn’t fancy my old bones, neither will the ‘sea-devil’.” Lifting his arms he took a dive and swam towards the boats. The divers pressed to the rail again, watching Baltasar’s progress with alarm. Handicapped though he was by age and an injured leg, he swam like a fish. A few powerful strokes brought the Indian alongside a boat. Picking up a floating oar he climbed into the boat.

“The painter’s cut with a knife,” he shouted. “Clean work-couldn’t have been done better with a razor.”

Seeing Baltasar safe and sound some of the divers followed suit.




Riding a Dolphin


Though only just risen the sun was scorchingly hot. There was not a cloud in the sky, not a ripple on the sea. The Jellyfish was a dozen miles or so south of Buenos Aires when, following Baltasar’s advice, anchor was dropped in a small bay near a shore that rose in two rocky ledges straight from the water.

The boats scattered all over the bay. Each was manned by two divers, who did the diving and the hauling in turns.

The diver in the boat closest inshore seized a big piece of coral that was tied to the diving cord between his legs and made swiftly for the sea-bed.

The water was warm and so transparent that you could count the pebbles on the sea-bed. Closer inshore corals rose up like so many bushes of a petrified submarine garden. Small silver-bodied fish flashed in and out among the bushes.

The diver crouched on the sea-bed, quickly picking shells and putting them into the small bag hooked to his leather belt. His tender, a Gurona Indian, his head and shoulders bent over the gunwale for a better view of the diver, held to his end of the diving cord.

Suddenly he saw the diver leap up, snatch at the cord and give it a sharp tug that nearly pulled the Gurona overboard. The boat rocked. The Indian hurried hand over hand with the cord. Presently he was helping the heavily breathing man into the boat. His pupils were dilated, his dusky face ashen.

“Was it a shark?”

But the diver had not recovered sufficient wind to answer.

What could have scared him so badly? The Gurona bent low to the water surface for a better look. Something was definitely wrong down there. The small fry-like birds spotting a falcon-were speeding to the safety of submarine forest thickets.

Then he saw what looked like a cloud of purplish smoke billow into view from behind a submarine rock. As the cloud grew bigger the water turned a pinkish tint. Then a dark shape half-appeared from behind the rock, made a slow turn and slid back. That was a shark and the purplish cloud-blood spilt on the seabed. What could have happened down there? The Gurona looked at his mate. But he couldn’t provide the answer. Lying on his back, he was snatching air with wide-open mouth, staring with unseeing eyes into the skies. There was nothing for it but to take him straight to the Jellyfish.

All the divers that were on board clustered round the man.

“Speak up, man,” said a young Indian, shaking the diver. “Afraid your funky soul will part company with your body, if you open your mouth, eh?”

The diver shook his head, slowly recovering.

“I saw the ‘sea-devil’,” he said in a hollow faltering voice.

“The ‘sea-devil’?”

“Come on then, for Christ’s sake, tell us about him,” the divers shouted impatiently.

“I looked up and saw a shark. Making straight for me. A big black brute with its huge jaws ready to snap. It sure seemed I’d had it. Then I saw him – ”

“The ‘devil’?”

“What does he look like? Has he got a head?”

“A head? Think he has. Eyes as big as saucers.”

“If he has eyes he must have a head,” was the young Indian’s verdict. “Eyes don’t come all by themselves. Any legs?”

“He’s got front legs-like a frog’s. Long green fingers, webbed and with daws. And he’s all ablaze like a fish with scales. He makes for the shark, flashes with a front leg. Swish! There’s a fountain of blood-”

“What do his hind legs look like?” a diver interrupted him.

“Hind legs?” He tried to remember. “There’s no hind legs. Just a big tail-ending in two snakes.”

“Who gave you the worst scare, him or the shark?”

“The monster! “ came the unhesitating answer. “For all it saved my life.”

“The ‘sea-devil’,” said an Indian.

“The sea-god that helps the poor,” an old Indian corrected him.

By this time the news had reached the farthest boats and more and more divers were coming on board, eager for the story.

The man was made to repeat his story over and over again. As he did so he recalled more details. It now appeared that the monster breathed fire and wriggled its ears, had sabre-like teeth, large fins and a tail like a rudder.

White-trousered and sombreroed Pedro Zurita shuffled back and forth in the background, his bare feet thrust into a pair of sandals, taking note of what was being said.

The more the diver recovered the use of his tongue the more Pedro became convinced that it was all a shark-scared diver’s imagination. And yet it can’t be only that, he thought. Somebody did slit that shark’s side open-with all that pinkish water in the bay. The Indian’s lying but there’s obviously more to it than meets the eyes. Rum business, dammit, he thought.

At that moment Zurita’s train of thought was cut short by the blow of a horn coming from the direction of the reefs.

It had the effect of a thunderbolt. Tongues were paralyzed. Faces turned ashen-grey. Horror-stricken eyes stared in the direction of the reefs.

Near the reefs a family of dolphins were frisking in the water. One of the dolphins gave a loud snort as if in response to the horn summons, made for the reefs and was soon lost to sight behind them. After a few tense moments it reappeared. Riding it was the oddest creature, in fact, the very “sea-devil” just described by (he diver. The monster had the body and head of a man, with a pair of immense eyes that blazed in the sun like a car’s headlights; silvery-blue skin and dark-green forelegs, long-fingered and webbed. The creature’s legs were immersed in the water, so there was no telling whether they were of man or of beast. In one of its forelegs the creature had a long winding shell. Giving another blow on it the creature laughed a gay manly laugh and suddenly shouted: “Full speed ahead, Leading! “ in perfect Spanish, patted the dolphin’s glossy back with its frog’s hand and spurred its mount with its legs. And like a well-broken horse the dolphin put on speed.

A cry of surprise escaped the divers.

The creature looked round. The next they knew it was off the dolphin and on the other side of it. A green foreleg shot into sight to slap the dolphin’s back. Obedient to it the mount submerged.

The odd pair could just be seen making a quick half-circle and then it disappeared behind the reefs.

The whole thing had taken not more than a minute but the lookers-on stood rooted to the spot for some time.

Then hell broke loose. Some of the Indians shouted and ran about as though demented, others fell on their knees and prayed to God to spare their lives. A young Mexican, bawling with fright, took refuge high up the main mast. The Blacks crept below into the hold.

There could be no question of going on with the work. It was all Pedro and Bal-tasar. could do to restore some order. The Jellyfish weighed anchor and sailed due north.




Zurita’s Ill Luck


The master of the vessel went below, to his cabin, to think things over. It’s enough to drive one mad! he thought, pouring tepid water from a jug over his head. A sea-monster speaking the purest Castellano! What was it? The Devil’s work? Hallutination? Can’t happen to whole crews though. No two men even see the same dream. But we all saw the thing. That’s a fact. So the “sea-devil” does exist after all-however impossible it may sound. Zurita poured more water over his head and leaned out of the port-hole for some fresh air.

“Sea-devil” or not, he thought on, calming a bit, the monster appears to possess intelligence and an excellent command of Spanish. You should be able to talk to it. Suppose-Yes, why not? Suppose I catch it and make it dive for pearls. Why, a creature like that would be worth a whole shipful of divers. I’d be simply minting money! Every diver must have his fourth of the catch but this thing here’d only cost me its keep. That’d mean thousands, millions of pesos rolling in.

Zurita glowed with his vision of wealth. Not that it was the first time he had had it. Time and again he had dreamt of finding new, still untapped, pearling grounds. The Persian Gulf, the western coast of Ceylon, the Red Sea and the coasts of Australia were far too distant for him and pretty well fished clean at that. Even the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of California and the coast of Venezuela, where the best American pearls were found, were too remote for his ancient schooner. He’d need more divers too. And Zurita had no money for that. So he kept in home waters. But now it was different. Now he could make his pile-once he had the “sea-devil” in his hands.

He’d be the richest man in Argentina, perhaps in both Americas. Money would pave his way to power. His name would sweep the world… But he had to play his hand careful like-and first see to it that the crew didn’t talk.

Zurita went on deck and had the whole crew down to the cook called up.

“You all know,” he told them, “what happened to those who had been spreading rumours about the ‘sea-devil’. If you don’t they’re still in jail. Let me give you a word of warning. This is it: anyone of you caught speaking of having seen the ‘sea-devil’ will be clapped in jail to feed vermin. Got that? So keep it under your hats unless you want to get into trouble.”

Nobody’d believe them anyway, not a fairy-tale like that, Zurita thought, and, telling Baltasar to follow him, went below.

Baltasar listened to Zurita’s plan in silence.

“Sounds good,” he said after a moment’s thought. “The creature’s worth a hundred divers. A ‘devil’ at your beck and call-not bad, eh? But you’ve got to catch it first.”

“A sturdy net’ll take care of that,” said Zurita.

“He’ll rip a net open as easily as he ripped that shark’s belly.”

“We can order a wire net.”

“Who’s going to do the catching? Not our divers. There’s not one in the whole lot of ‘em won’t turn yellow at the mere name of it. They wouldn’t dream of giving a hand, not for all the riches in the world.”

“What about you, Baltasar?”

The Indian shrugged his shoulders.

“I’ve never hunted a ‘sea-devil’. I expect it’ll be no easy thing stalking him, seeing as youll want him alive.”

“You’re not afraid, are you, Baltasar? What do you make of this ‘sea-devil’ anyway?”

“What can I make of a jaguar that takes to the air or a shark that climbs the trees? A beast you don’t know is terrifying. But I like my game terrifying.”

“I’ll make it worth your while.” Zurita placed an assuring hand on Baltasar’s arm.

“The fewer people in on it, the better,” he went on elaborating his plan. “You speak to the Araucanians we have on board. They’ve got more guts between them than the rest. Pick half a dozen from them, no more. If ours hold back, look about for others on shore. The ‘devil’ seems to be keeping close inshore. Well try and locate his lair first. Then we’ll know where to shoot our net.”

They wasted no time. Zurita had a wire bag net that looked like a big barrel with the bottom open made to order. Inside it he spread ordinary nets, in a way calculated to enmesh the devil. The divers were paid off. Baltasar had only managed to enlist two Araucanians from the crew. Another three he had signed on in Buenos Aires.

It was decided to start the “devil” hunt in the bay where they had first seen it. The schooner dropped anchor a few miles off the bay so as not to arouse the ‘devil’s’ suspicions. While Zurita’s party occupied themselves with occasional fishing-to justify their hanging around-they took turns in watching the waters of the bay from the shelter of some rocks on the shore.

A second week was running out but there was still no sign of the “devil.”

Baltasar had struck up acquaintance with some Indians from a farming village nearby. He would sell them the daily catch at half-price and then stay behind for a chat, cleverly bringing up the subject of the “sea-devil”. Soon the old Indian knew that they had been right in choosing the spot. Indeed, many villagers had heard the horn and seen the footprints on the beach. They said that the heels looked quite human but the toes were much too long. Sometimes they would find an imprint of the devil’s back on the beach where he had lain.

The “devil” was not known to have done anybody any harm, so the villagers had long ceased to mind the traces he left behind. Besides, none of them had actually seen him.

For two weeks the Jellyfish had kept near the bay, going on with the make-believe fishing. For two weeks Zurita, Baltasar and the hired Indians had scanned the bay, but still no “sea-devil” would show up. Zurita fretted and raged. He was as stingy as he was impatient. Every day cost money and that “devil” had kept them cooling their heels there many days now. Pedro was assailed by doubts. Suppose the creature was really a devil? Then no nets would catch him. Neither did superstitious Zurita particularly like the idea of meddling with one. Of course he could call a priest on board to bless the undertaking, but that would involve additional expense. And then, again, the creature might be some first-rate swimmer disguised as a “devit” to put fear into people for the sheer fun of it. There was the dolphin, of course. But that could have been tamed and trained like any other animal. Wouldn’t it be better to drop the whole thing, he wondered.

Zurita promised a reward to the first man to spot the “devil” and, tormented with doubts, decided to wait a few days longer.

To his immense joy the third week brought signs of the “devil’s” renewed activity.

One evening Baltasar tied up his boat, laden with that day’s catch to be sold in the morning, and went to a nearby farm to visit an Indian friend. On his return he found the boat empty. Baltasar was convinced that it was the “devil’s” handiwork though he couldn’t stop marvelling at the amount of fish the “devil” had put away.

Later that evening the Indian on duty reported having heard the sound of a horn coming from the south. Two days later, early in the morning, the youngest Araucanian finally spotted the “devil”. He came in from sea in the dolphin’s company, not riding it this time but swimming alongside, grasping with one hand a broad leather collar round the dolphin’s neck. In the bay the “devil” took the collar off the dolphin, patted it on the back, swam to the foot of a sheer cliff that jutted high on the shore and was seen no more.

On hearing the Indian’s report Zurita promised not to forget about the reward and said: “The ‘devil’ isn’t likely to stir from his den today. That gives us a chance to have a look at the sea-bed. Now, then, who’s willing?”

But that was a risk nobody was eager to take.

Then Baltasar stepped forward.

“I’m willing,” was all he said. Baltasar wasn’t one to go back on his word.

Leaving a watchman on board they went ashore and to the steep cliff.

Baltasar wound the end of diving cord round his middle, took a knife, seized a stone between his knees and went down.

The Araucanians waited in tense silence for his appearance, peering into the water, murky blue where the cliff cast a deep shadow. A slow minute went by. At last there was a tug at the cord. When Baltasar had been helped ashore it was some time before he could say, panting:

“There’s a narrow passage down there-leads into a cave-as dark as a shark’s belly. And no other place for the ‘devil’ to be gone to-just a sheer wall of rock all round.”

“Splendid! “ exclaimed Zurita. “The darker, the better. We only have to cast the net and wait for the blighter to walk in.”

Dusk was falling on the bay when the Indians lowered the wire net into the water across the mouth of the cave and secured the sturdy end ropes to rocks on shore. Then Baltasar tied a number of small bells to the ropes for early warning.

That done, Zurita, Baltasar and the five Araucanians settled down on the sand to await developments, Nobody had been left on board the schooner this time. All hands were needed.

The night darkened swiftly. Presently the moon appeared and silvered the surface of the ocean. The hush of night enveloped the beach. The little party sat on in tense silence. Any minute now they might see that strange creature that had been striking terror into the fishermen and pearl-divers.

The night dragged on. People began drowsing.

All of a sudden the bells rang. The men sprang up, ran for the end ropes and heaved. The net felt heavy. The ropes tautened. Something seemed to be struggling in the net.

At last the net came up and the pale moonlight revealed in it the body of a half-man, half-beast writhing and struggling to get free. The enormous eyes and silvery scales glistened, moonlit. The “devil” made desperate attempts to free his right hand, caught in the wire meshes. Finally he succeeded, unsheathed the knife that hung on a narrow leather belt at his side and started hacking at the net.

“No, you don’t, not a wire net,” Baltasar muttered under his breath.

But to his surprise the “devil’s” knife was whetted to the task. As the divers heaved at the net for all they were worth to get it on shore the “devil” was deftly widening the gash he had already made.

“Heave-ho, my hearties,” Baltasar shouted urgently.

But at the very moment when their quarry seemed as good as in their hands the “devil” dropped through the gash into the water, sending up a cascade of sparkling spray, and was gone.

The men stopped heaving in desperation.

“That’s some knife-cutting wire as you’d cut a loaf of fresh bread,” Baltasar said admiringly. “The underwater blacksmiths must be a darned sight better’n ours.”

Staring into the water Zurita had the air of a man who had lost all his fortune at one stroke.

Then he raised his head, tugged at his bristly moustache and stamped his foot.

“But no, damn you, this isn’t the end! “ he exclaimed. “I won’t give up if I have to starve you in your bleeding cave. I’ll spare no money, I’ll hire divers, I’ll have nets and traps put everywhere but I’ll get you! “

Whatever Zurita was lacking in, it was certainly not purpose and courage. This he had got with the hot blood of Spanish conquistadors that ran in his veins. And then he thought the thing was worth a fight, all the more so considering the “devil” was not half as formidable as he had feared.

A creature that could be made to tap the riches of the world for him would repay itself many times over. Zurita was going to have it, be it even guarded by Neptune himself.




Dr. Salvator


Nor did Zurita go back on his word. He had had the mouth of the cave and the waters nearby crossed and recrossed with barbed wire and sturdy nets with ingenious traps guarding the few free passages left. But there was only fish to reward him for his pains. The “sea-devil” had not shown up once. In fact he seemed to have disappeared altogether. His dolphin friend put in a daily appearance in the bay, snorting and gambol-ling in the waters, apparently eager for an outing. But all in vain. Presently the dolphin would give a final snort and head for the open sea.

Then the weather changed for the worse. The easterner lashed up a big swell; sand whipped from the sea-bed made the water so opaque that nothing could be seen beneath the foamy crests.

Zurita could spend hours on the shore, watching one huge white-headed breaker after another pound the beach. Broken, they hissed their way through the sand, rolling over pebbles and oyster shells, onto his very feet.

“This can’t go on,” Zurita said to himself one day. “Something must be done about it. The creature’s got his den at the bottom of the sea and he won’t stir from it. Very well. So he who wants to catch him must pay him a visit. Plain as the nose on your face.” And turning to Baltasar who was making another trap for the “devil” he said:

“Go straightway to Buenos Aires and get two diving outfits with oxygen sets. Ordinary ones won’t do. The ‘devil’s’ sure to cut the breathing tubes. Besides we might have to make quite a trip underwater. And mind you don’t forget electric torches as well.”

“Thinking of giving the ‘devil’ a look-up?” asked Baltasar.

“In your company, old cock. Yes.”

Baltasar nodded and set off on his errand.

When he returned he showed Zurita besides two diving suits and torches two long elaborately-curved bronze knives.

“They don’t make their kind nowadays,” he said. “These’re ancient knives my forefathers used to slit open the bellies of your forefathers with – if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Zurita didn’t care for the history part of it but he liked the knives.

Early at dawn the next day, despite a choppy sea, Zurita and Baltasar got into their diving suits and went down. It cost them considerable effort to find a way through their own nets to the mouth of the cave. Complete darkness met them. They unsheathed their knives and switched on their torches. Small fish darted away, scared by the sudden glare, then came back, swarming, mosquito-like, in the two bluish beams.

Zurita shooed them away: their silvery scales were fairly blinding him. The divers found themselves in a biggish cave, about twelve feet high and twenty feet wide. It was empty, except for the fish apparently sheltering there from the storm or bigger fish.

Treading cautiously they went deeper into the cave. It gradually narrowed. Suddenly Zurita stopped dead. The beam of his torch had picked out from the darkness a stout iron grille blocking their way.

Zurita could not believe his own eyes. He gripped at the iron bars in an attempt to pull the grille open. It didn’t give. After a closer look Zurita realized that it was securely embedded in the hewn-stone walls of the cave and had a built-in lock.

They were faced with still another riddle.

The “sea-devil” had apparently even greater intelligence than they had ever credited him with. He knew how to forge an iron grille to bar the way to his underwater den. But that was utterly impossible! He couldn’t have forged it actually under the water, could he! That meant he didn’t live underwater at all or at least that he went ashore for long stretches of time.

Zurita felt his blood throb in his temples as though he had used up his store of oxygen in those few minutes under water.

He motioned to Baltasar and they went out of the cave, and came up.

The Araucanians who had been on tenterhooks waiting for them were very glad to see them back.

“What do you make of it, Baltasar?” said Zurita after he had taken off his helmet and recovered his breath.

The Araucanian shrugged his shoulders.

“We’ll be ages waiting for him to come out, unless, of course, we dynamite the grille. We can’t starve him out, all he needs is fish and there’s plenty of that.”

“Do you think, Baltasar, there might be another way out of the cave – inland I mean?”

Baltasar hadn’t thought of that.

“It’s an idea though. Why didn’t we have a look round first,” said Zurita.

So he started on a new search.

On shore Zurita came across a high solid white-stone wall and followed it round. It completely encircled a piece of land, no less than twenty-five acres. There was only one gate, made of solid steel plates. In one corner of it there was a small steel door with a spy-hole shut from inside.

A regular fortress, thought Zurita. Very fishy. The farmers round here don’t normally build high walls. And not a chink anywhere to have a peep through.

There was not a sign of another habitation in the immediate neighbourhood, just bald grey rocks, with an occasional patch of thorny bush and cactus, all the way down to the bay.

Zurita’s curiosity was roused. For two days he haunted the rocks round the wall, keeping a specially sharp eye on the steel gate. But nobody went in or out, nor did a single sound come from within.

One evening, on board the Jellyfish, Zurita sought out Baltasar.

“Any idea who lives in the fortress above the bay?” he asked.

“Salvator-so the Indian farm-labourers tell me.”

“And who’s he?”

“God.”

The Spaniard’s bushy black eyebrows invaded his forehead.

“Having your joke, eh?”

A faint smile touched the Indian’s lips.

“I’m telling you what I’ve been told. Many Indians call Salvator a God and their saviour.”

“What does he save them from?”

“Death. He’s all-powerful, they say. He can work miracles. He holds life and death in the hollow of his hand, they say. He makes new, sound legs for the lame, keen eyes for the blind, he can even breathe life into the dead.”

“Carramba! “ muttered Zurita, as he flicked up smartly his bushy moustache. “There’s a ‘sea-devil’ down the bay, and a ‘god’ up it. I wonder if they’re partners.”

“If you take my advice we’ll clear out of here, and mighty quick, before our brains curdle with all these miracles.”

“Have you seen anyone who was treated by Salvator?”

“I have. I was shown a man who had been carried to Salvator with a broken leg. He was running about like a mustang. Then I saw an Indian whom Salvator had brought back to life. The whole village say that he was stone-dead with a split skull. Salvator put him on his feet again. He came back, full of life and laughter. Got married to a nice girl too. And then all those children-”

“So Salvator does receive patients?”

“Indians. They flock to him from everywhere-from as far away as Tierra del Fuego and the Amazon.”

Not satisfied with this information Zurita went up to Buenos Aires.

There too he learned that Salvator treated only Indians with whom he enjoyed the fame of a miracle-worker. Medical men told Zurita that Salvator was an exceptionally gifted surgeon, indeed a man of genius, but very eccentric, as is often the case with men of his calibre. His name was well known in medical circles on both sides of the Atlantic. In America he was famed for his bold imaginative surgery. When surgeons gave up a case as hopeless Salvator was asked to step in. He never refused. During the Great War he was on the French front where he operated almost exclusively on the brain. Thousands of men owed him their lives. After the Armistice he went back home. His practice and real estate operations landed in his lap quite a fortune. He threw up his practice, bought some land near Buenos Aires, had a high wall built round it (another of his eccentricities), and settled down there. He was known to have taken up research. Now he only treated Indians, who called him God descended on earth.

Finally Zurita found out that before the War right where his present vast holding lay Salvator had had a house with an orchard also walled in on all sides. When Salvator had been away in France the house had been closely guarded by a Black and a pack of ferocious bloodhounds.

Of late Salvator had lived a still more cloistered life. He wouldn’t receive even his old university colleagues.

Having gleaned all this information, Zurita decided to take illness so as to get inside the grounds.

Once again he was in front of the stout steel gate guarding Salvator’s property. He rapped on the gate. Nobody answered. He kept rapping on it for some time and still there was not a stir inside. His blood up, Zurita picked up a stone and started battering the gate, raising a din fit to wake the dead.

Dogs barked somewhere well inside and at last the spy-hole was slid open.

“What do you want?” a voice asked in broken Spanish.

“A sick man to see the doctor-hurry up now, open the door.”

“Sick men do not knock in this way,” came the placid rejoinder and an eye peeped through at Zurita. “Doctor’s not receiving.”

“He can’t refuse help to a sick man,” insisted Zurita.

The spy-hole shut; the footsteps died away. Only the dogs kept up their furious barking.

Venting some of his anger in choice invective, the Spaniard set out for the schooner.

Should he lodge a complaint against Salvator in Buenos Aires, he asked himself once he was aboard. But what was the use? Zurita shook in futile rage. His bushy black moustache was in real danger now as he kept tugging at it in his agitation, making it fall like a barometer showing the doldrums.

Little by little, however, he quietened down and set to thinking what he should do next.

As he went on thinking his sunburnt fingers would travel up more and more often to give a flip to his drooping moustache. The barometer was rising.

At last he emerged on deck, and to everybody’s surprise, ordered the crew to weigh anchor.

The Jellyfish stood for Buenos Aires.

“And about time too,” Baltasar commented. “So much time and effort wasted. A curse on that ‘devil’ with a ‘god’ for a crony!”




The Sick Granddaughter


The sun was angrily hot. An old Indian, thin and ragged, was plodding along a dusty country road that ran through alternating fields of wheat, maize and oats. In his arms he carried a child covered against the sun with a little blanket very much the worse for wear. The child’s eyes were half-closed; an enormous tumour bulged high on its neck. Whenever the old man stumbled the child groaned hoarsely and its eyelids quivered. Then the old man would stand still to blow into its face.

“If only I can get it there alive,” he whispered and quickened his pace.

Once in front of the steel gate the old Indian shifted the child onto his left arm and gave the side door four raps with his right hand.

He had a glimpse of an eye through the spy-hole, the bolts rattled and the door swung open.

The Indian stepped timidly inside. Standing in front of him was a white-smocked old Black with a head of snowwhite hair.

“I’ve brought a sick child,” the Indian said.

The Black nodded, shot the bolts home and motioned to the Indian to follow.

The Indian looked round him. He found himself in a small prison-like court, paved with big flagstones, with not a blade of grass anywhere. A wall lower than the outer one divided the court from the rest of the estate. At the gateway in the inner wall stood a large-windowed whitewashed building. Near it squatted a group of Indians-men, women and children.

Some of the children were playing jackstones with shells, others were wrestling in silence. The old Black saw to it that they did not disturb the peace of the place.

The old man eased himself down submissively in the shade of the building and started blowing into the child’s bluish inert face. An old Indian woman squatting down beside him threw a glance at the pair.

“Daughter?” she asked.

“Granddaughter,” the Indian replied.

“It’s the bog spirit as entered your child. But he’s stronger’n any evil spirit, he is. Hell bring the poor thing back to health.”

The Indian nodded.

The white-smocked Black, who was making a round of the sick, stopped in front of the Indian and beckoned to him to go in.

The room that the Indian entered was big and bare, except for a long narrow table, covered with a white sheet, standing in the centre of the flagged floor. A second, frost-glass panelled door was opened and in strode Dr. Salvator, a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-complexioned man wearing a white smock. The black eyelashes and eyebrows were the only hair on his head. He must have taken to shaving his head long ago, for it wore as good a coat of tan as his face. An aquiline nose, a jutting chin and tightly compressed lips lent to his face a cruel, one might say, predatory expression. The cold look of his brown eyes sent little shivers down the Indian’s spine.

The Indian made a low bow and stretched his arms with the girl in them towards the doctor. With quick, sure and yet careful hands Salvator took the sick girl from the Indian’s arms, unwound the rags with which she was swathed and tossed them very neatly into a receptacle in the corner. The Indian made to retrieve them but was stopped in his tracks by a peremptory “Leave them where they are”.

Then Salvator laid the little girl on the table and bent over her. In profile now, he seemed to the Indian a bird of prey poised to strike. Salvator was examining the tumour with his fingers. These too struck the Indian’s imagination. They were long and amazingly supple and seemed to be able to bend not only downwards, but from side to side and even upwards. The Indian, normally a plucky man, tried to fight down the feeling of fear the extraordinary doctor had aroused in him.

“Excellent, splendid,” Salvator was saying, as if in admiration of what he saw. The examination over, Salvator turned to the Indian.

“Come in a month’s time, when the moon’s new again, and you’ll have your little girl back-healthy.”

And he took the girl behind the frost-glass door.

Meanwhile the Black had led in the next patient, the old woman with a swollen leg.

The Indian made a low bow in the direction of the frost-glass door and went out.

In exactly twenty-eight days the frost-glass door was opened again.

The little girl, sporting a new dress, lively and apple-cheeked, appeared in the doorway. There was alarm in her eyes as she caught sight of her granddad. The Indian lunged forward, picked the girl up, smacked her a kiss and examined her throat. The tumour was gone. There was only a tiny reddish scar where the girl had been operated upon.

The child kept pushing her granddad away with her hands and had even cried out when, kissing her, he pricked her with his stubbly chin. He had to let her down. Salvator came in. There was a flicker of a smile on his face as he patted the child’s head and said:

“Here, take your child. You were only just in time bringing her. Another few hours and even I would not have been able to recall her to life.”

The lips in the Indian’s crinkled face quivered and tears came into his eyes. He gave the little girl another hug, then fell on his knees before Salvator.

“You saved my granddaughter’s life,” he said in a stifled voice. “A poor Indian has nothing but his own life to repay you with.”

“What do I want with your life?” wondered Salvator.

“I may be old but there’s strength in my arms yet,” the Indian went on, not rising from his knees. “I’ll take the little one to her mother-my daughter-and then come back. My life is now yours-for what you’ve done for me. I will serve you like a dog. Please don’t say no, I beg you.”

Salvator pondered.

He was chary of taking new servants. Not that he didn’t need any. There was much work to do. Help Jim with the gardening, for instance. Come to think of it, he did need a servant. He would have preferred a Black, to be sure, but this Indian fellow seemed all right…

“You make me a gift of your life. Very well. I accept it. When can you come?”

“I’ll be back before the first quarter’s over,” said the Indian, kissing the hem of Salvator’s smock.

“What is your name?”

“Cristobal, Cristo for short.”

“Go, Cristo. Ill be waiting for you.”

“Come on, my girlie,” Cristo said to the child and picked her up again. She started to cry. Cristo hurried away.




An Orchardful of Miracles


When Cristo turned up again a week later Dr. Salvator greeted him with a searching glance and said:

“Now then, Cristo, pay attention to what I’m going to tell you. I’m taking you on. You'll have good pay and board – ”

Cristo waved his hands.

“I don’t want anything so long as you let me serve you.”

“Be silent and listen,” Salvator cut him short. “You’U have everything as I said you would. But there’s one condition: keep your mouth shut about everything you see here.”

“I’d sooner cut my tongue out with my own hands and throw it to the dogs than breathe a single word to anybody.”

“See you don’t have to do that,” came Salvator’s warning. With that he summoned in the white-smocked Black and ordered him to take Cristo into the orchard and place him in Jim’s charge.

Bowing silently, the Black took the Indian outside and across the courtyard to the iron gate in the inner wall.

In response to the Black’s knock a barking of dogs came from behind the wall, then the gate creaked and opened slowly. The Black gave Cristo a light push, shouted something in throaty tones to the Black who stood inside the gate, and went away.

Cristo backed against the wall in fright. Charging at him were a pack of beasts with tawny black-spotted fur. Had they been in the pampas Cristo would not have hesitated in calling them jaguars. But these barked like dogs. Anyhow there was no time to puzzle it out. Cristo sprinted for the nearest tree and was up it with an agility surprising in a man of his age. The Black hissed at them, for all the world like an angry cobra, at once bringing them to. The beasts stopped their thunderous baying, lay down and put their muzzles on their forepaws, slanting their eyes up at their master.

The Black hissed again, this time to Cristo, and beckoned him to climb down.

“What’re you hissing there like a snake for? Swallowed your tongue,eh?”

The Black only gave an angry inarticulate sound. He must be dumb, Cristo thought and remembered Salvator’s warning. Does Salvator really cut out the tongues of those who betray his secrets? This poor blighter might be one of them. Sudden fear almost made Cristo lose his grip on the tree-trunk. He wished to God he were on the right side of the great wall again. With his eyes he measured the distance between his tree and the wall but saw he couldn’t make it. Meanwhile the Black had approached the tree, got hold of Cristo’s foot and was tugging at it impatiently. There was nothing for it but to take the hint. Cristo sprang down, grinned his most engaging smile, stretched out his hand and said amiably:

“Jim?”

The Black gave a nod.

Cristo pumped his hand. Once in hell, play up to the devils, he thought. Aloud he asked:

“Dumb?”

There was no answer.

“Got no tongue?”

Still no answer.

Even if he’s got no tongue, Cristo thought, he could at least talk in signs. Instead Jim took the Indian by hand, led him up to the tawny-skinned beasts and hissed something at them. The beasts rose, sniffed at Cristo and went calmly off. Cristo felt more at ease.

Then Jim led him on a round of the orchard.

After the bare stone-flagged yard the orchard looked a paradise of blossom and verdure. Stretching eastwards, it gently sloped down almost to the very shoreline. Narrow alleys strewn with finely crushed bluish-green agaves and yellowish-green flowers criss-crossed it between groves of peach and olive trees. These gave shade to lush grass-its deep green broken here and there by little white-stone ponds and beds of bright many-coloured flowers. A few fountains were sending high their jets of sparkling water to lend freshness to the air.

The orchard vibrated with the singing of birds and the roaring of beasts.

Never in his life had Cristo seen the strange birds and animals that met his eye at every turn.

A six-legged lizard scuttled across the path, its greenish skin coppery in the bright sun. A double-headed snake was hanging from a tree, making Cristo jump as it hissed at him with its two throats. A still louder hiss from the Black, however, silenced it; dropping from the tree it disappeared among a border of rushes. Another long snake hurried away from the path where it had been basking, helping itself along with a pair of legs. In a little enclosure, near the walk, a pig was grunting, its large single eye fixed at Cristo.

Then a pair of large white rats, joined side to side, scuttered towards them along the reddish walk, looking for all the world like a double-headed, eight-legged monster. From time to time this dual creature went through a struggle; each rat tried to pull its way, both squeaking their displeasure. But the right side invariably won. Grazing near the path was another pair of Siamese twins, fine-fleece sheep this time. Unlike the rats they never quarreled; they must have reached a common mind long, long ago. But it was the monster they met next that struck Cristo’s imagination most. It was a big pink dog with not a single hair on it but what looked like a little monkey-or the upper part of one at any rate-sticking out from its back. The dog came up to Cristo and wagged its tail, while the little monkey kept jerking its head right and left, waving its arms, patting the dog on the back and jibbering at Cristo. The Indian dug a hand into his trouser pocket, brought out a piece of sugar and was offering it to the monkey when somebody stopped his hand and hissed. It was Jim, whom Cristo, engrossed by all those queer creatures, had clean forgotten. The old Black explained by signs that he was not to feed the monkey. Cashing in on the interlude a parakeet-headed sparrow swooped down at the piece of sugar which Cristo still had between his fingers and carried it off to safety behind a bush. From farther away, in the middle of a meadow, came the lowing of a horse with a cow’s head.

A pair of llamas swept across the meadow, their horse’s tails spreading out in flight. Strange creatures were crowding on Cristo from all sides: dogs with cat’s heads, cocks waddling on webbed feet, homed boars, eagle-beaked ostriches, puma-bodied sheep.

Cristo thought he was having a nightmare; he rubbed his eyes, sprinkled his head with cool water from a pond but nothing helped. In the ponds he saw snakes with fishes’ heads and gills, fish with frogs’ legs, enormous toads with bodies as long as a lizard’s.

And Cristo again wished himself well outside the walls.

Finally, Jim brought the Indian to a broad sand-strewn stretch in the middle of which stood a white-marble Moorish-style villa, its arches and colonnades half-screened behind the trunks of palm trees. Brass dolphin-shaped fountain spouts sent cascades of water into the pools where goldfishes frisked in the pellucid water. The biggest fountain of them all, opposite the main entrance, had the shape of a youth astride a dolphin – perhaps it was Triton, the marine god of the an-cientswith a winding horn pressed to his mouth. Obviously the work of a master sculptor, the group looked all but alive.

Behind the villa there were a few outhouses and still farther, a jungle of thorny cacti, with a white wall at the far end, showing through at places.

Another wall, thought Cristo.

Jim led him into a small cool room. In his sign language he explained that Cristo was to live there and then left him alone.




The Third Wall


By and by Cristo began finding his way about in the new strange world. It didn’t take him long to find out that the animal population of the orchard was quite tame. With some he was soon even on terms of friendship. The dogs with jaguar skins, the cause of such scare on his first day in the orchard, followed him about, licking his hands. The llamas ate out of his hand. The parrots perched on his shoulder.

The orchard and the animals were tended by twelve Blacks as dumb as Jim. At any rate Cristo never heard them speak. They all went silent about their business. Jim was a sort of superintendent over them. He gave them their work and saw that they did it. Cristo, much to his own surprise, had been appointed his deputy. His duties were not hard. There wasn’t too much work and the food was plentiful. But the oppressive silence of the Blacks soon began to get him down. Besides, he was convinced that they had all had their tongues cut out. And every time Salvator summoned him to the office-not that it was often-Cristo thought his turn had come. But then something happened to allay his fears.

One day he came across Jim lying fast asleep in the shade of an olive tree. The Black was lying on his back, his mouth hanging open. Cristo used the opportunity of looking for the Black’s tongue and, to his relief, found it there all right.

Dr. Salvator’s day was well-planned and busy. From seven to nine he received patients, from nine to eleven he operated upon those who required it. Then he went to his villa to do laboratory work. This involved operating on animals and studying them. An experiment over, the animals went back to the orchard. Cristo, who dusted the rooms in the villa, managed occasionally to slip into the laboratories. The things he saw there would haunt his imagination for long afterwards. Hearts and kidneys carved out of their bodies lived on in glass jars. Amputated limbs seemed to be waiting for their owner.

His skin crawling Cristo hurried out. He preferred to be among the live monsters of the orchard.

Salvator seemed to trust the old Indian, but not beyond the third wall. And it was just what was on the other side that Cristo was so eager to see. One midday, when everybody was having a siesta, he stole up to the wall. Children’s voices floated over to him. They spoke an Indian dialect he knew but intermingling with them, as if in a quarrel, there were other voices, thin and squeaky, speaking what seemed to Cristo a very peculiar brand of Indian.

Coming across Cristo in the orchard one day Salvator halted and, looking him straight in the eye as was his wont, he said:

“You’ve been with me a month now, Cristo, and I’m pleased with your work. One of the servants in the lower orchard has fallen ill. You will replace him. You will see many new things there. But mind that little conversation we had about your tongue unless you want to lose it.”

“I’ve almost forgotten the use of it with all your dumb Blacks around, Doctor,” said Cristo.

“Excellent. Silence pays, you know. Incidentally, do you know your way in the Andes?”

“I was born and bred in the mountains.”

“Splendid. I will soon want to replenish my zoo with a new batch of birds and animals. I’m going to take you with me. You may go now. Jim will take you to the lower orchard.”

Accustomed though he was to the wonders of the place, Cristo had more surprises coming.

In the spacious sunlit meadow naked children were playing with monkeys. Almost all Argentina’s Indian tribes seemed to be represented there by children ranging in age from about three to twelve years. All of them were patients of Salvator’s. Many had undergone complicated operations and owed their very lives to Salvator’s skill. Once round the corner the children recuperated playing in the orchard till they were strong enough to be taken home.

Tailless monkeys with not a tuft of hair on their bodies kept them company. But what really amazed Cristo was that all of them could speak some kind of Indian. They joined in the children’s games, quarrelling with them and shouting in thin high-pitched voices, though on the whole they were quite a friendly crowd.

Sometimes Cristo was inclined to think they were human beings after all.

The lower orchard, as Cristo soon found out, was smaller than the other one, sloped steeper seawards and ended in a big cliff rising sheer like a wall. Somewhere behind it was the invisible ocean, revealed by the roar of the surf.

A closer look showed that the cliff was man-made and, in fact, nothing more than another wall, a fourth one, for in it Cristo found an iron door, painted grey to blend with the cliff and furthermore screened by a thick growth of wistaria.

Cristo listened. The roar of the surf was the only sound. Where did the small door lead to? The seaside?

Suddenly there was a hubbub of children’s voices behind him. Cristo wheeled round and saw the children staring up into the sky. He also looked up and spotted a small red balloon slowly floating up and across the orchard. The wind was heading it seawards.

An ordinary children’s balloon, it seemed to stir Cristo deeply. As soon as the servant that had been ill reported for work, the old Indian went to see Salvator.

“Soon we’re leaving for the Andes, Doctor. It might be some time before we come back. May I go and see my daughter and her child?”

Salvator didn’t like his servants leaving the premises, and he didn’t speak at once. Cristo stood waiting, his eyes boldly meeting the cold stare of Salvator’s.

“Remember your pledge,” said Salvator. “I wouldn’t like you to lose your tongue. You may go, but see you’re back within three days. Wait! “

Salvator went into the other room and brought back with him a suede leather pouch.

“There’s something for your granddaughter – and for your silence too.”




An Ambush


“If he doesn’t come this time I’ll cut the painter as far as the pair of you are concerned, I’ll be damned if I won’t. I’ll get smarter people onto the job,” Zurita was saying, tugging impatiently at his bristly moustache. He wore a white town suit and a panama hat. They had met well outside Buenos Aires, at a point where the pampas were taking over from the maize fields.

Baltasar, in a white blouse and a pair of blue-striped trousers, was squatting by the roadside, plucking dejectedly at the sun-parched brittle blades of grass.

He himself was beginning to regret having sent his brother to spy on Salvator.

Though Baltasar’s elder by ten years, Cristo was strong and lithe and as cunning as a pampas-cat. But he was not reliable. He couldn’t settle down to anything. There had been a time he took up farming but soon dropped it, thoroughly bored. Then he ran a dockside tavern till he drank himself out of house and home. Lately Cristo had been earning a precarious living on the windy side of the law. With his sharp wits he could ferret out anything but was not to be trusted with much. He might even betray his own brother if it were made worth his while. Baltasar knew his man and was as worried as Zurita.

“Are you sure Cristo saw the balloon, anyhow?”

Baltasar shrugged his shoulders. He would have much preferred to drop the whole affair there and then, go home and have a glass of cold water laced with wine in the peace and quiet of his shop.

A cloud of dust mushroomed over the turn of the road and was lit up by the last rays of the setting sun. A shrill drawn-out whistle was heard.

Baltasar livened up.

“That’s him! “ he said.

“Not too damned soon either,” said Zurita.

Striding briskly towards them was Cristo – no longer a doddering old Indian with a sick grandchild come to see the doctor. Giving another whistle Cristo came nearer and saluted the pair.

“Well, have you seen the ‘sea-devil’?” Zurita asked him by way of greeting.

“Not yet, but he’s there all right. Salvator keeps him behind four walls. The main thing is Salvator trusts me. That sick granddaughter did it.” Cristo laughed, narrowing his sly eyes. “She nearly gave the whole show away though. When she recovered, I mean. Here’s me, picking her up and kissing her like a loving grand – dad and she kicks away and fairly bursts into tears,” and he laughed again.

“Where did you get the girl?” asked Zurita.

“Money’s hard to get, girls aren’t,” said Cristo. “And her mother’s happy too. I got five pesos-she got her daughter back healthy.”

That he had also received a sizeable sum from Salvator he didn’t trouble to mention. All the more understandable this, since he wasn’t going to share it with the child’s mother.

“A regular zoo that place – chock-full of monsters.” And Cristo started his story.

“That might all be very interesting,” Zurita said after some time and lighted a cigar, “but you haven’t seen the goods. What do you propose to do next?”

“Make a trip to the Andes.” And Cristo told them of Salvator’s plan.

“Splendid! “ exulted Zurita. “We’ll attack the place as soon as Salvator’s party leaves and carry the ‘sea-devil’ away by force. The place’s so out-of-the-way one could do it in broad daylight and nobody the wiser.”

Cristo shook his head.

“The jaguars will bite your heads off. Even if they don’t you won’t find the ‘sea-devil’-not until I’ve found out where he is.”

“Then here’s what well do,” Zurita said, after thinking it over for a while. “Well ambush Salvator’s party, take him prisoner and hold him to ransom. The ‘sea-devil’'ll be the price.”

With a slick movement of his hand Cristo drew a cigar out of Zurita’s breast pocket.

“Many thanks. An ambush’s better. But Salvator’s sure to pull some trick on you-promise to deliver the goods and never do it or something. Those Spaniards-” the rest of the sentence was lost in coughing.

“Well, what do you suggest?” Zurita said irritably.

“Patience. Salvator trusts me but only as far as three walls go. He must be made to trust me as he trusts his own shadow, then he’ll show me the ‘sea-devil’ of his own free will.”

“Well?”

“Well, Salvator will be attacked by bandits,” he jabbed his finger at Zurita’s chest, “and delivered from them by an honest Araucanian” – he tapped his own chest. “Then there will be no secrets from Cristo in Salvator’s house. And no lack of golden pesos,” he added in an aside for himself.

“That’s not a bad idea.”

Then they agreed on the road Cristo should suggest to Salvator.

“On the eve of the departure I’ll throw a red stone over the wall. Have everything ready.” And Cristo was gone.

Though the plan of attack was well worked out an unforeseen circumstance nearly made it fall through.

Zurita, Baltasar and a dozen cutthroats hired in the dockside, wearing Gaucho clothes all well armed and mounted, had taken up stations alongside the pampas road. The night was dark. The gang listened hard for the hoofbeats.

Suddenly the bandits heard the chugging of an engine, quickly drawing nearer. Two powerful headlights stabbed the darkness and before they knew where they were a big black car had rushed by.

It had never entered Cristo’s head that Salvator could travel in this new, unconentional way.

Zurita was beside himself with rage and disappointment; Baltasar was amused.

“Take it easy, master,” he said. “They travel by night and will rest in the daytime. We’ll overtake them.” And he spurred his horse on; the rest followed suit.

They had ridden hard for the better part of two hours when they spotted the glow of a campfire ahead.

“That’s them. Something’s happened. Wait for me here while I do some scouting.”

And dismounting, Baltasar crawled snakelike into the darkness.

He returned in an hour.

“The car’s out of order. They’re repairing it. Cristo keeps watch. Come on, let’s hurry and get it done with.”

It was a quick job. The bandits took Salvator’s party by surprise – just when they had repaired the car-and tied Salvator, Cristo and the three Blacks hand and foot with not a shot fired.

One of the bandits, who acted chieftain, Zurita preferring to stay in the’ background, told Salvator that they were prepared to ransom him for a big sum of money and named it.

“Youll have it,” said Salvator.

“That’s for you. And it’s double if you want your men set free too,” said the bandit following up his advantage.

“I haven’t got that much money available,” Salvator said, after a pause.

“Finish him off! “ the bandits shouted all at once.

“I’ll give you till dawn to think it over,” said the bandits’ spokesman.

Salvator shrugged his shoulders as he repeated:

“I haven’t got that much available.”

His coolness impressed even the bandits.

Taking Salvator and his men aside, the bandits ransacked the car and found the spirits intended for collections. Soon they were drunk and sleeping on the ground.

At crack of dawn somebody crawled softly to Salvator’s side.

“It’s me,” came Cristo’s voice. “I managed to untie myself and have killed the bandit on watch. The rest are drunk and incapable. Let’s hurry! “

They got in, the Black driver started the engine, the car leapt forward.

Behind there were shouts and a few rifle shots rang out.

Salvator pressed Cristo’s hand.

Only after Salvator’s departure did Zurita learn that Salvator had been willing to pay. Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to take it than try to kidnap a “sea-devil” nobody knew was worth anything? It’s all over bar the shouting, though, he thought. And he waited for news from Cristo.




The Amphibian


Cristo had hoped that Salvator would send for him and say:

“You’ve saved my life, Cristo. From now on there will be no secrets for you in this place. Come with me, I’ll show you the ‘sea-devil’.” Or words to that effect.

But Salvator fell short of Cristo’s hopes. He generously rewarded the brave Araucanian and became all wrapped up in his research again.

So Cristo started his own research. The secret door proved a hard nut to crack but his patience was rewarded in the end. One day he pressed a boss on it and it swung slowly open, like the door to a strong room. Cristo slipped through and the door swung shut, taking him a little aback. He examined it, pressing every boss in turn; the door didn’t open.

“A fine trap I caught myself in,” he muttered. “Well, I might as well have a look round.”

He found himself in a hollow, thickly overgrown with trees and bushes and walled in on all sides with man-made cliffs.

The plants Cristo saw were of the kind usually growing on humid soils. The big shady trees did not let sunlight through to the numerous rivulets burbling underneath. Fountains, scattered among the trees, added to the moisture in the air. The place was as damp as the low banks of the Mississippi. Standing in the middle of the grounds was a small flat-roofed stone house with lichen-clad walls. The green blinds on the windows were pulled down. The house had a not-lived-in look.

Cristo reached the far end of the orchard. Judging by the rustle of pebbles that came to him from behind the wall the ocean was close at hand. So this is as far as Salvator’s holding goes, thought Cristo. In front of the wall was a huge square tree-lined swimming pool no less than fifteen feet deep.

At Cristo’s approach some creature he didn’t have time to see beyond a glimpse dashed from under the trees and across to the swimming pool, making a big splash as it plunged in. Cristo’s heart was beating nineteen to the dozen as he went closer. That must be him, the “sea-devil”, he thought. He was going to see him at last.

The Indian looked into the clear water.

On the bottom on white stone tiles crouched a big monkey. There was fear mingled with curiosity in its return glance. And it was breathing-breathing under the water! Spell-bound, Cristo couldn’t tear his glance away from its sides, heaving and falling, heaving and falling…

Presently, with a start, Cristo recovered himself and gave a short laugh. So the “sea-devil”, fisherman’s bogey, was just a monkey that could breathe underwater.





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