Free Playing with Water by James Hamilton-Paterson Page B

red? So many people in Sabay were frightened. The young ones thought the world was going to end and the old ones think it’s a bad omen because they say it went like that before the Japanese came. We’ll come and sleep over here so we can all get up at one o’clock. Can you use a compressor?’
    I have already spotted that the
Jhon-Jhon
is equipped with a rusty air compressor. This can be driven off the twelve-horsepower Briggs & Stratton that powers the boat by the simple method of slipping the drive-belt off the propshaft and over the compressor’s flywheel. On the narrow marine-ply decks fore and aft are piles of thin plastic hose. It is the simplest (and most dangerous) system for diving which exists. The diver takes the end of a hose in his mouth and goes down, controlling the airflow with histeeth. With a good pump and a lot of nerve it is possible to go down one hundred and fifty, even two hundred feet which is effectively the limit for scuba divers as well. To work in the dark for two or three hours with a torch and a spear gun at only half that depth is to become conscious of living on the edge. I tell Arman I have dived with a compressor. He has never before heard of a ’
kano
doing so and wants to know where I learned. I name another province where I was three or four years ago. He is surprised.
    ‘I didn’t know they did it there as well. We often get Visayans here who have compressors, though. I think maybe it’s everywhere in the Philippines, then. Typical Filipino cheap way.’
    He sounds disappointed that the fishermen of Sabay and these parts are not exclusive after all, but proud to belong to that fraternity who get by without all the namby-pamby foreign clutter of scuba equipment. I am afraid we compressor-divers rather fancy ourselves. He recommends the submerged boulders beyond one end of the beach as a good place for daytime fishing and goes back down to his boat. On the way I tell him I prefer deeper water. He looks at me speculatively and pushes off. The engine starts and soon his hemplike hair disappears around the headland and the motor’s noise is abruptly cut off. Intoy frolicks in the shallows wearing goggles made from carved pieces of wood set with olives of glass. He grins as I pass on the way to fetch my spear gun. His mouth is full of white teeth, his eyes invisible behind flashing heliographs.
    Intoy is good. He does not yet like to go much below twenty feet but he is stealthy and understands the habits of the various kinds of fish better than I do. I hang in the clear water and watch him a couple of fathoms below as he hides behind an outcrop of coral, lying in wait for a small school of parrotfish which as usual approach cautiously but full of curiosity. Just when I think he must be at the end of his breath he fires and hits a one-pound
manitis
, one of the goatfishes with the characteristic twin barbels beneath its chin. He comes surging up with it spitted on his spear, trailing spent air in glittering streams. He breaks the surface and pants, very matter-of-fact about his catch. Fishare not at all easy to spear during the day, being altogether too alert. The glassy water conducts every sound as if it were a tympanum; it is like being immersed in synaptic fluid designed to transmit the tiniest neural message, a sentient bath so ‘live’ it is a wonder to get anywhere near a sizeable fish. But with practice one can. After an hour or so Intoy and I have enough between us for lunch and maybe for supper as well.
    We climb from the water, spitting, and sit on the rocks with the sea lapping up over our feet. From slightly behind him I watch the droplets run from the shining wicks of his hair and trickle down his brown nape. Beneath the steady pour of sun on our backs the surface of his skin doubles its depth. A new layer stands off as though he were covered with a dusting of light, a powdery membrane which sheathes his whole body. The effect is similar to that when eye and mind are