Dolphin Island

There was also an octopus, the first that Johnny had ever seen. It was a baby, a few inches across, and it was lurking shyly in the shadows, where only an expert like Mick could have spotted it When he scared it out into the open, it slithered over the corals with a graceful flowing motion, changing its color from dull gray to a delicate pink as it did so. Much to his surprise, Johnny decided that it was quite a pretty little creature, though he expected that he would change his views if he met a really large specimen.

He could have spent all day exploring this one small pool, but Mick was in a hurry to move along. So they continued their trek toward the distant line of the sea, zigzagging to avoid areas of coral too fragile to bear their weight.

Once, Mick stopped to collect a spotted shell the size and shape of a fir cone. “Look at this,” he said, holding it up to Johnny.

A black, pointed hook, like a tiny sickle, was vainly stabbing at him from one end of the shell.

“Poisonous,” said Mick. “If that gets you, you’ll be very sick. You could even die.”

He put the shell back on the rocks while Johnny looked at it thoughtfully. Such a beautiful, innocent-looking object—yet it contained death! He did not forget that lesson in a hurry.

But he also learned that the reef was perfectly safe to explore if you followed two common-sense rules. The first was to watch where you were stepping; the second was never to touch anything unless you knew that it was harmless.

At last they reached the edge of the reef and stood looking down into the gently heaving sea. The tide was still going out, and water was pouring off the exposed coral down hundreds of little valleys it had carved in the living rock. There were large, deep pools here, open to the sea, and in them swam fish much bigger than any Johnny had seen before.

“Come along,” said Mick, adjusting his face mask. With scarcely a ripple, he slipped into the nearest pool, not even looking back to see if Johnny was following him.

Johnny hesitated for a moment, decided that he did not want to appear a coward, and lowered himself gingerly over the brittle coral. As soon as the water rose above his face mask, he forgot all his fears. The submarine world into which he had looked from above was even more beautiful, now that he was actually floating face down on the surface. He seemed like a fish himself, swimming in a giant aquarium, and able to see everything with crystal clarity through the window of his mask.

Very slowly, he followed Mick along the winding walls, between coral cliffs that grew farther and farther apart as they approached the sea. At first the water was only two or three feet deep; then, quite abruptly, the bottom fell away almost vertically, and before Johnny realized what had happened, he was in water twenty feet deep. He had swum off the great plateau of the reef, and was heading for the open sea.

For a moment he was really frightened. He stopped swimming and marked time in the water, looking back over his shoulder to check that safety was only a few yards behind him. Then he looked ahead once more—ahead and downward.

It was impossible to guess how far he could see into the depths—a hundred feet, at least. He was looking down a long, steep slope that led into a realm completely different from the brightly lit, colorful pools which he had just left. From a world sparkling with sunlight, he was staring into a blue, mysterious gloom. And far down in that gloom, huge shapes were moving back and forth in a stately dance.

“What are they?” he whispered to his companion.

“Groupers,” said Mick. “Watch.” Then, to Johnny’s alarm, he slipped beneath the surface and arrowed down into the depths, as swiftly and gracefully as any fish.

He became smaller and smaller as he approached those moving shapes, and they seemed to grow in size by comparison. When he stopped, perhaps fifty feet down, he was floating just above them. He reached out, trying to touch one of the huge fish, but it gave a flick of its tail and eluded him.

Mick seemed in no hurry to return to the surface, but Johnny had taken at least a dozen breaths while he was watching the performance. At last, to the great relief of his audience, Mick began to swim slowly upward, waving good-by to the groupers as he did so.

“How big were those fish?” asked Johnny when Mick had popped out of the water and recovered his breath.

“Oh, only eighty, a hundred pounds. You should see the really big ones up north. My grandfather hooked an eight-hundred-pounder off Cairns.”

“But you don’t believe him.” Johnny grinned.

“But I do,” Mick said, grinning back. “That time he had a photograph to show it.”