Dolphin Island

“Not yet, if you don’t mind—until I know which ideas are utterly insane and which ones are merely crazy. Give me a couple of weeks, and meanwhile, you might inquire if anyone has a killer whale that I can borrow. Preferably one that won’t eat more than a thousand pounds of food a day.”

Chapter 11

Johnny’s first trip across the reef at night was an experience he remembered all his life. The tide was out, there was no Moon, and the stars were brilliant in a cloudless sky when he and Mick set off from the beach, equipped with waterproof flashlights, spears, face masks, gloves, and sacks, which they hoped to fill with crayfish. Many of the reef’s inhabitants left their hiding places only after dark, and Mick was particularly anxious to find some rare and beautiful shells which never appeared in the daytime. He made a good deal of money selling these to mainland collectors—quite illegally, as the island fauna was supposed to be protected under the Queensland Fisheries Act.

They crunched across the exposed coral, with their flashlights throwing pools of lights ahead of them—pools that seemed very tiny in the enormous darkness of the reef. The night was so black that by the time they had gone a hundred yards there was no sign of the island; luckily, a red warning beacon on one of the radio masts served as a landmark. Without this to give them their bearings, they would have been hopelessly lost. Even the stars were not a safe guide, for they swung across much of the sky in the time it took to reach the edge of the reef and to return.

In any event, Johnny had to concentrate so hard on picking a way across the brittle, shadowy coral world, that he had little time to look at the stars. But when he did glance up, he was struck by something so strange that for a moment he could only stare at it in amazement.

Reaching up from the western horizon, almost to a point overhead, was an enormous pyramid of light. It was faint but perfectly distinct; one might have mistaken it for the glow of a far-off city. Yet there were no cities for a hundred miles in that direction—only empty sea.

“What on earth is that?” asked Johnny at last. Mick, who had gone on ahead while he was staring at the sky, did not realize for a moment what was puzzling him.

“Oh,” he said, “you can see it almost every clear night when there’s no Moon. It’s something out in space, I think. Can’t you see it from your country?”

“I’ve never noticed it, but we don’t have nights as clear as this.”

So the two boys stood gazing, flashlights extinguished for the moment, at a heavenly wonder that few men have seen since the glare and smoke of cities spread across the world and dimmed the splendor of the skies. It was the Zodiacal Light, which astronomers puzzled over for ages until they discovered that it was a vast halo of dust around the Sun.

Soon afterward, Mick caught his first crayfish. It was crawling across the bottom of a shallow pool, and the poor creature was so confused by the electric glare that it could do nothing to escape. Into Mick’s sack it went; and soon it had company. Johnny decided that this was not a very sporting way to catch crays, but he would not let that spoil his enjoyment when he ate them later.

There were many other hunters foraging over the reef, for the beams of the flashlights revealed thousands of small crabs. Usually they would scuttle away as Johnny and Mick approached, but sometimes they would stand their ground and wave threatening claws at the two approaching monsters. Johnny wondered if they were brave or merely stupid.

Beautifully marked cowries and cone shells were also prowling over the coral; it was hard to realize that to the yet smaller creatures of the reef, even these slow-moving mollusks were deadly beasts of prey. All the wonderful and lovely world beneath Johnny’s feet was a battlefield; every instant, countless murders and ambushes and assassinations were taking place in the silence around him.

They were now nearing the edge of the reef and were splashing through water a few inches deep. It was full of phosphorescence, so that with every step, stars burst out beneath their feet. Even when they stood still, the slightest movement sent sparkles of light rippling across the surface. Yet when they examined the water with the beams of their flashlights, it appeared to be completely empty. The creatures producing this display of luminescence were too tiny, or too transparent, to be seen.

Now the water was deepening, and in the darkness ahead of him, Johnny could hear the roar and thunder of waves beating against the edge of the reef. He moved slowly and cautiously, for though he must have been over this ground a dozen times by day, it seemed completely strange and unfamiliar in the narrow beams of the flashlights. He knew, however, that at any moment he might stumble into some deep pool or flooded valley.