第31章 THE PRINCESS(4)

"I have said she was a mermaid.She was.I know she swam thirty- six hours before being rescued, after her schooner was capsized in a double-squall.I have seen her do ninety feet and bring up pearl shell in each hand.She was wonderful.As a woman she was ravishing, sublime.I have said she was a sea-goddess.She was.Oh, for a Phidias or a Praxiteles to have made the wonder of her body immortal!

"And that day, out for squid on the reef, I was almost sick for her.Mad - I know I was mad for her.We would step over the side from the big canoe, and swim down, side by side, into the delicious depths of cool and colour, and she would look at me, as we swam, and with her eyes tantalize me to further madness.And at last, down, far down, I lost myself and reached for her.She eluded me like the mermaid she was, and I saw the laughter on her face as she fled.She fled deeper, and I knew I had her for I was between her and the surface; but in the muck coral sand of the bottom she made a churning with her squid stick.It was the old trick to escape a shark.And she worked it on me, rolling the water so that I could not see her.And when I came up, she was there ahead of me, clinging to the side of the canoe and laughing.

"Almost I would not be denied.But not for nothing was she a princess.She rested her hand on my arm and compelled me to listen.We should play a game, she said, enter into a competition for which should get the more squid, the biggest squid, and the smallest squid.Since the wagers were kisses, you can well imagine I went down on the first next dive with soul aflame.

"I got no squid.Never again in all my life have I dived for squid.

Perhaps we were five fathoms down and exploring the face of the reefwall for lurking places of our prey, when it happened.I had found a likely lair and just proved it empty, when I felt or sensed the nearness of something inimical.I turned.There it was, alongside of me, and no mere fish- shark.Fully a dozen feet in length, with the unmistakable phosphorescent cat's eye gleaming like a drowning star, I knew it for what it was, a tiger shark.

"Not ten feet to the right, probing a coral fissure with her squid stick, was the Princess, and the tiger shark was heading directly for her.My totality of thought was precipitated to consciousness in a single all- embracing flash.The man-eater must be deflected from her, and what was I, except a mad lover who would gladly fight and die, or more gladly fight and live, for his beloved? Remember, she was the woman wonderful, and I was aflame for her.

"Knowing fully the peril of my act, I thrust the blunt-sharp end of my squid-stick into the side of the shark, much as one would attract a passing acquaintance with a thumb-nudge in the ribs.And the man-eater turned on me.You know the South Seas, and you know that the tiger shark, like the bald-face grizzly of Alaska, never gives trail.The combat, fathoms deep under the sea, was on - if by combat may be named such a one-sided struggle.

"The Princess unaware, caught her squid and rose to the surface.The man-eater rushed me.I fended him off with both hands on his nose above his thousand-toothed open mouth, so that he backed me against the sharp coral.The scars are there to this day.Whenever I tried to rise, he rushed me, and I could not remain down there indefinitely without air.Whenever he rushed me, I fended him off with my hands on his nose.And I would have escaped unharmed, except for the slip of my right hand.Into his mouth it went to the elbow.His jaws closed, just below the elbow.You know how a shark's teeth are.Once in they cannot be released.They must go through to complete the bite, but they cannot go through heavy bone.So, from just below the elbow he stripped the bone clean to the articulation of the wrist-joint, where his teeth met and my good right hand became his for an appetizer.

"But while he was doing this, I drove the thumb of my left hand, to the hilt into his eye-orifice and popped out his eye.This did not stop him.The meat had maddened him.He pursued the gushing stump of my wrist.Half a dozen times I fended with my intact arm.Then he got the poor mangled arm again, closed down, and stripped the meat off the bone from the shoulder down to the elbow-joint, where his teeth met and he was free of his second mouthful of me.But, at the same time, with my good arm, I thumbed out his remaining eye."Percival Delaney shrugged his shoulders, ere he resumed.

"From above, those in the canoe had beheld the entire happening and were loud in praise of my deed.To this day they still sing the song of me, and tell the tale of me.And the Princess." His pause was brief but significant."The Princess married me....Oh, well-a-day and lack-a- day, the whirligig of time and fortune, the topsyturviness of luck, the wooden shoe going up and the polished heel descending a French gunboat, a conquered island kingdom of Oceania, to-day ruled over by a peasant- born, unlettered, colonial gendarme, and..."He completed the sentence and the tale by burying his face in the down-tilted mouth of the condensed milk can and by gurgling the corrosive drink down his throat in thirsty gulps.

After an appropriate pause, Chauncey Delarouse, otherwise Whiskers, took up the tale.