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

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.

“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.

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.