Dolphin Island

More unnerving than any sharks were the packs of barracuda that roamed along the edge of the reef. Johnny was very glad that the surfboard was floating overhead the first time he discovered that the water around him was full of the silver sea pike, with their hostile eyes and aggressive, underslung jaws. They were not very large—three feet long at the most—but there were hundreds of them, and they formed a circular wall, with Johnny at the center. It was a wall that came closer and closer as the barracuda spiraled in to get a better look at him, until presently he could see nothing but their glittering bodies. Though he waved his arms and shouted into the water, it made not the slightest difference: they inspected him at their leisure— then, for no reason that he could see, turned suddenly away and disappeared into the blue.

Johnny surfaced, grabbed the board, and held an anxious conference with Mick across it Every few seconds he kept bobbing his head underwater, to see if the wolf pack had returned.

“They won’t bother you,” said Mick reassuringly. “‘Cuda are cowards. If you shoot one, all the others will run away.”

Johnny was glad to know it and took the next meeting more calmly. All the same, he never felt quite happy when the silver hunters closed in on him, like a fleet of spaceships from an alien world. Perhaps some day, one of them would risk a nibble, and then the whole pack would move in…

There was one serious difficulty about exploring the reef: it was too big. Most of it was far beyond comfortable swimming range, and there were areas out toward the horizon that had never been visited. Often Johnny wished he could have gone farther into unknown territory, but he had been forced to save his strength for the long swim home. It was on one of these weary return journeys, as he helped Mick to push the surfboard loaded with at least a hundred pounds of fish, that the answer occurred to him.

Mick was skeptical, but agreed that the idea would be splendid—if it worked. “It’s not going to be easy,” he said, “to make a harness that will fit a dolphin. They’re so streamlined that it will slide off them.”

“I’m thinking of a kind of elastic collar, just ahead of the flippers. If it’s broad enough and tight enough, it should stay on. Let’s not talk about it, though—people will only laugh at us.”

This was good advice, but impossible to carry out. Everyone wanted to know why they needed sponge rubber, elastic webbing, nylon cord, and oddly shaped pieces of plastic, and they had to confess the truth. There was no hope of carrying out the first trials in secrecy, and Johnny had an embarrassingly large audience when he fitted his harness on Susie.

He ignored the jokes and suggestions from the crowd as he buckled the straps around the dolphin. She was so trusting that she made no objection, being quite confident that Johnny would do nothing to harm her. This was a strange new game, and she was willing to learn the rules.

The harness fitted over the front part of the dolphin’s tapering body, being prevented from slipping back (so Johnny hoped) by the flippers and dorsal fin. He had been very careful to keep the straps clear of the single blowhole on the back of the head, through which the dolphin breathed when it surfaced, and which closed automatically when it dived.

Johnny attached the two nylon traces to the harness and gave them a good tug. Everything seemed to be staying in place, so he fastened the other ends to Mick’s surfboard and climbed on top of it.

There was an ironic cheer from the crowd as Susie pulled him away from shore. She had needed no orders; with her usual swift grasp of the situation, she understood exactly what Johnny was trying to do.

He let her drag him out for a hundred yards, then pressed the LEFT button on the communicator. Susie responded at once; he tried RIGHT, and again she obeyed. The surfboard was already moving faster than he could have swum, yet the dolphin was barely exerting herself.

They were heading straight out to sea, when Johnny muttered: “I’ll show them!” and signaled FAST. The board gave a little jump and started to fly across the waves as Susie went into top gear. Johnny slid back a little, so that the board planed properly and did not nose down into the water. He felt very excited and proud of himself, and wondered how fast he was traveling. Flat out, Susie could do at least thirty miles an hour; even with the drag of the board and the restriction of the harness, she was probably touching fifteen or twenty. And that was quite a speed, when you were lying flat on the water with the spray blowing in your face.

There was a sudden “snap,” the board jerked wildly to one side, and Johnny flew to the other. When he came to the surface, spluttering, he found that nothing had broken; Susie had just popped out of her harness like a cork out of a bottle.