Mind Games part 25 A dip in the pool

Mind Games part 25 A dip in the pool


I examined the 'Special Offer'. It had two separate rubbers and not just one bent round the front of the barrel, which was good. It had a new standard spring steel 'wishbone', which was at least standard. The blue anodised steel threaded female junction on it were not quite the same shade as the ends of the 'male' threaded bolt ends which were clamped onto the ends the Rubbers. That was bad. It had a six hundred pound breaking strain braided nylon tether for the spear sleeve. That was standard. It was faded and dirty, that was bad. The spear, a four and half foot long quart inch steel rod sporting a bullet head with a single hinged flange barb on one side spear head looked straight. That was good. The metal wasn't shiny new, that was bad. Trigger mechanism and safety catch were both mechanically sound. That was good. The ring shaped metal 'sleeve' with the groove in it for tying on the harpoon line was firmly attached to said line. That was good. When I held the harpoon at a fairly steep angle and let it go, it slid down the shaft of the spear, catching slightly about three quarters of the way down. That was bad.

I examined the rear face of the steel sleeve where the flattened tail of the spear always struck it violently during firing. There was an almost imperceptible notch on the inner rim, protruding slightly into the circular space through which the spear had to run to leave the gun. That was what had caught on the shaft. I tested it again. Sometimes it slid all the way down to the shoulder of the bullet point and sometimes it didn't. The gun was certainly no bargain. It had been heavily used and was second hand! Within five shots it would have jammed and then the last quarter of the harpoon would fail to leave the socket in the heavy metal plate above the gun barrel which held the faulty sleeve while the gun was loaded; result, misfire!

I chose an indubitably new 'deux couchouc' arbalette of a good French make and we went back outside with it. "What was wrong with the other one?" asked the professor, "They luiked the same to me."

"They weren't," I told him, explaining how the used one would have let me down. "Doctor, would you mind hunting down a cheap aluminium frying pan, some olive oil, pepper, driftwood and a few stones to build a fire pit. Get an oven shelf from my place, or anywhere, I don't mind." The august psychiatrist, academic and current Number Two didn't seem to mind being told what to do. I instructed him to scavenge the makings of a picnic in case I failed to hit anything, and see if he could arrange to be set up on the beach just above high water mark before I got back. Then I stripped down to my Y-fronts and, pointing down the shallow slope of Port Meirion sand towards the sea I said, "I'm just going out there for a bit.... I may be some time!"

I was going to be some time. At least an hour and a half.  As I watched, the sea drained quietly and slowly back into the lower reaches of Port Meirion Bay. When the tide had stopped going out like a race horse and slowed down at a point half an hour before slack water, I walked out into the surf and started swimming as soon as the warm, Indian Ocean water was deep enough. It took several minutes for the fawn and grey Welsh sand to give way to the crushed marine seashells and coral grains that had made up most of the beaches on the good parts of the Kenya Coast. This looked like the approach to the permanently submerged fringing reef off shore, at 4 degrees and 20 minutes south of the Equator and a few miles south of Mombassa.

When we had known it there was a line of thatched beach huts there for rent, miles from anywhere, a blindingly bright white sand beach with a driftwood tree washed up on it... and, well that was it, really; nothing else at all except coastal dwelling tribesmen who fished from dugout, single pontoon outrigger canoes like primitive catamarans.

After what felt like half an hour, the lumpy yellow green upper parts of the fringing reef hove into view. Nowhere was it shallower than twenty feet. A large coral head came to within nearly that distance ahead of me to my left. I knew that beyond it the reef rapidly dropped off to about fifty or sixty feet before the sandy sea bottom took over and sloped more gently downwards on the seaward side until it was lost to sight under the deep, blue green water.

Look around! It was my internalised, imaginary 'March Hare Mission' instructor telling me what to do in unfamiliar surroundings. There were some gatterin clustered near a submarine rock on the shoreward side of the reef which might be worth a long range approach and shot. I would have to get down to their level well before trying to sneak up on them, but were they big enough to be worth the effort.

With some embarrassment I realised that I'd failed to buy a spring steel fish keep loop to mount on my weight belt or, indeed, the weight belt itself. Doing without meant hitting a two pounder with my first attempt and then swimming back with it on the spear. There was no way for me to keep several tiddlers together on such a long swim, even if they were easier to stalk and hit. A large parrot fish would be good, if a bit bland. Most of the tropical white sand had been made out of parrot fish crap. They ate coral and excreted only the ground up skeletal remains. I saw one. It was fairly far down, and a peacock blue-green fat tear drop shape; fast and bulbous, I thought; and it was pointed away from me. Somehow they always were, and if they weren't then they'd turn away  and begin to dawdle further away as soon as they'd seen me. They could play that game for ages.

A silvery oblique diamond shape flashed in and out of my vision through twenty five metres of the clear blue water to seaward.  Pompano? I asked myself. Did they come in to feed when the reef was well lit and the water still at low tide? There would be forty five minutes of slack water at most, then the waves crossing the reef would begin to break up, and I did not want to swim home through foaming, choppy white water. I'd tried that in a small inflatable boat once and nearly lost everything, including my life.

While I'd been scanning my patch of coral sea and thinking about all this I had also been breathing slowly, calmly, and as deeply as possible in and out. I'd been doing that for about five minutes. Diving with a weight belt is not hard. I adjust mine so that I sink when my lungs are more than half empty and only just float with them almost full. A duck dive on a full breath will then take me to the bottom, if it's within sight at all, and sometimes even if not. Without a belt, I would have to empty my lungs to do the same thing. I took the largest breath I could and then let about two thirds of it out.

Bending forward at the waste with my legs held ramrod straight and as stiff as though I'd been bowing to the Japanese Ambassador, I drove my entire torso downwards until it was aimed vertically at the sea bed directly below me, then straightened my legs again so that they stuck up into the air. The excess unfloated weight of legs and fins pushed me far enough down into the water for the increased pressure to squeeze my lungs almost to the point of neutral bouyancy. One long, slow scissors kick with the fins and I was beneath that and sinking again.

I leveled out at about twenty five feet and started swimming  slowly downhill towards the left hand shoulder of the ten foot tall coral head to my right, loaded spear gun stretched ahead of me in that 'predator approaching' profile that had frightened away more fish than I could count. Finding a 'blind' behind which I could hide; one that didn't have fire coral growing in it, I settled down to wait.