Free 03 Underwater Adventure by Willard Price Page B

spectator ever enjoyed seeing the Christians thrown to the lions in a Roman arena more than Skink delighted in the death struggle of his three companions.
    But he sang a different tune when a mako, making one of those high jumps for which the mako are famous, sprang a full fifteen feet into the air and came crashing down on the rail, smashing it to bits. The big body slid across the deck, scraping off generous portions of Skink’s hide as it passed.
    This was enough to remove any lingering numbness that might have remained in Skink’s leg. He jumped like a jack-rabbit for the ratlines and swarmed up to the crow’s nest. In this retreat he crouched, shivering lest one of the terrible acrobats of the sea might reach him even here.
    Blake and Hal made another attempt to hoist Roger up the ladder, but again the sharks destroyed their plan. Roger dropped back into the sea.
    The situation had become desperate. All three swimmers had reached the limit of their strength and of their wits. The end could not be far off, and Hal found himself regretting that the wonderful film in the camera would sink to the bottom of the lagoon where no audience would ever view it.
    Roger sank some distance to a point where, looking up, he happened to see Omo working on the far side of the hull with his acetylene torch, quite unaware of the battle being fought on the other side of the ship.
    With powerful strokes Roger shot up to Omo’s side and snatched the acetylene torch from the hands of the astonished crewman. Holding the flame-spitting machine, he swam under the keelson and came up into the churning mob of sharks.
    Like King Arthur with the burning sword Excalibur, Roger attacked his enemies. The flame with its temperature of 3,600 degrees, a flame that could cut steel, was too much even for a blood-maddened shark.
    A big white shark limped away with a hole as big as a tub burned in the side of its head. In the time that it would take to open its mouth, a blue shark lost its lower jaw. The knight of the Round Table next took on a hammerhead which stumbled away with one of its hammers gone.
    Here, there, up and down, flashed the deadly flame. The berserk fish came back to their senses, forgot about blood, forgot about everything except that scorching dagger, and fled for their lives in all directions.
    Mute with astonishment, Blake and Hal waited at the foot of the ladder. There was not a shark in sight. Roger took the torch back to Omo, then joined them at the ladder. They climbed to the deck. The rail was smashed on both beams, where the leaping shark had landed and where it had slid off again into the sea. From the crow’s-nest peered down the frightened face of Skink.
    The three fighters dropped wearily to the deck. Hal set the camera down tenderly. In that camera was the greatest picture of a shark battle ever filmed.
    Blake was looking at Roger as if he had never seen him before. ‘My boy,’ he said, ‘I want to apologize for putting you on the sidelines. Why, you’re a better man than any of us. Your wit saved us from a very messy death.’
    Roger glowed under the chief’s praise. He felt he had grown up. No longer would they call him a kid and push him off to one side when there was fun afoot. Now he belonged.

Chapter 8
The Iron Man
    ‘Today we’ll try deep-sea diving,’ Blake announced on the following morning. ‘We want to get some colour pictures of life a quarter mile down.’
    He smiled at the wide-eyed surprise caused by his words.
    ‘You are aware, I hope,’ said Skink scornfully, ‘that the aqualung cannot be used at a depth of more than three or four hundred feet.’
    ‘Quite aware. We won’t use aqualungs. We’ll use the Iron Man.’
    Blake gave orders to Captain Ike and Omo, who removed the hatch and dropped a steel cable with a hook at the end from the tip of the cargo boom. Then the motor winch was started, the cable began to wind on to the drum, and up out of the hold rose a grotesque monster of steel and