03 Underwater Adventure Read Online Free Page B

venomous sting arched above its greenish-white body.
    Those things come on board in the baskets of fruit,’ Blake said.
    Hal drew on the clumsy suit. Within this waterproof, airproof garment he at once began to sweat profusely.
    The suit was so bulky and heavy that he was unable to bend over to put on his boots. Blake fitted them to his feet. Each boot had a thick sole of solid lead and weighed fifty pounds. When Hal tried to walk he found he could scarcely lift his feet.

Chapter 3
The scorpion in the helmet
    ‘Next, the helmet,’ Blake said. ‘But there’s one valve missing. I’ll get it’
    He went down the companionway to the storeroom. Roger was at the bow, attracted by the flashing of a porpoise. Hal was busy inspecting his suit. So there was no one to notice when Skink went to the scuppers where the scorpion had lodged, picked it up deftly by the tail, and dropped it inside the copper helmet.
    Blake returned, and with Skink’s help lifted the weighty helmet, let it down over Hal’s head, and locked it to the suit.
    The pump was started and air began to come through the hose into the helmet. Hal peered out between iron bars through the narrow window and felt like a prisoner in a death cell. The sun beating upon the suit and the metal helmet made him feel faint.
    Was he going to collapse before he even got into the water? Then what would Blake think of him?
    All told, the helmet, suit, and boots weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. It was as if he were trying to carry a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man. The perspiration rolled down his face. Leaning heavily upon Roger and Skink, he shambled over to the rail.
    Dr Blake had lowered a short ladder. Hal sat on the rail and the three men helped him to get his heavy feet over and down on to a rung of the ladder. Then he slowly descended the ladder into the water.
    The feet seemed to become lighter when they went under the surface. When his suit and helmet had also submerged, he was free of the terrific weight.
    But he still felt like a prisoner awaiting execution. He could do little for himself. His fate was in the hands of the men above. If that pump stopped he was done for.
    If his hose buckled, he would get no air. If they let him down too fast he would get the ‘squeeze’, and if they drew him up too fast he would get the ‘bends’.
    And he could not forget that he had an enemy above, one who would stop at nothing to get him out of the way.
    His feet touched bottom. He stood in a fairyland of grotesque coral figures, pink monsters, purple fans, blue and gold trees with branches like the antlers of a moose.
    The airline attached to his helmet and the lifeline fastened to his shoulder strap went up, up, and disappeared through the roof. It looked like a roof, a roof of frosted glass. He could not see through it. He could see the hull of the ship where it sank into the water, but above the waterline everything was invisible. He could not see Roger peering down, or Dr Blake at the pump, or Skink paying out the lifeline and hose.
    But he suddenly realized that too much was being paid out. As soon as he touched bottom the two lines should have been held taut. Instead, more had come down, and coils of the black hose and white lifeline lay on the lagoon floor beside him. He must be careful not to get tangled in those loops.
    He practised walking. It was an awkward business. He had to lean far forward like a falling tree. It was a hard job to pull up a foot, advance it, and put it down again. The stiffness of his suit, now puffed up with air, made every move difficult.
    Suddenly he received unexpected and unwanted help. One of the strong currents that stagger across the bottom of Truk lagoon caught him in the back and pushed him forward a dozen feet. He had no time to see what this did to his lifeline and hose. He had no sooner steadied himself than a reverse current carried him fifteen feet backwards and sideways.
    He clung to a coral branch as the currents tried to