Grinning, he reeled the line in, pulling hard. The grouper made short, deep runs from side to side, coming ever closer. It tired quickly. A grouper’s fight was soon gone. Pierson could see it now. It rolled just below the surface. He held the line with his left hand, got the short gaff from behind him, gaffed the grouper securely, and heaved it up over the stern. He yanked his knife out, reversed it in his hand and clubbed the big fish with the weighted handle. At the second blow it shuddered and lay still.
Pierson sat, breathing hard, admiring it for long seconds. The blacks were far prettier than the reds and had more fight. The flesh was firmer.
The barb was driven better than halfway through the fish. He hammered it through the rest of the way, untied the knot behind the barb and pulled it out. As it had not been dulled, he washed the blood from it and from the line after he pulled it back through the fish, re-tied it and inserted it back in the barrel of the gun. He shoved the dead grouper up into the bow, recoiled the line, cleaned his mask again, and slipped over the side once more. The grouper had pulled the boat into slightly deeper water. Visibility on the bottom was reduced to what he guessed to be not more than twelve horizontal feet.
The moment he touched bottom and acquired precarious balance, he saw a form that made his heart hammer. The grouper upstairs was nothing. This creature drifted five feet above him and six feet straight ahead of him, the incarnation of viciousness, and yet so slim and beautiful and perfectly designed for its devilish purposes that it was as though a hard hand had closed on his heart.
It was a slim and deadly wolf of the sea, a barracuda, with tiny glowing eyes, undershot jaw, whip-lean efficiency of motion. And it was so huge that he imagined it to be nearer to him than it was. This was indeed the king of barracudas, a seven-foot monster, a record fish. The taint of grouper blood in the water had brought it there at a fifty-mile speed.
It watched Pierson speculatively. His flesh crawled, even though he knew he was safe. A barracuda will sometimes flash up and snap as much as two pounds of flesh from a surface swimmer far out from shore. But its wariness and intelligence is such that it will not attack an unknown object on the sea floor, unless the underwater fisherman is so stupid as to fasten a wounded fish to his belt and taint the water around him with fresh blood.
Pierson knew that a barracuda will fight with a high, wild and perfect fury that has in it something of the astonishing power of a wounded jungle cat. It never gives up its writhing, heart-exploding efforts until it is dead, and even in the moment of dying the jaws can clamp like a bear trap.
Pierson knew it would be wise to try to frighten it away. And yet he wanted it. The odds were a hundred to one against boating it. He would have frightened away a smaller one. But this monster...
It disappeared so quickly that he did not see it go. He felt a bitter disappointment. He turned slowly and saw that it had reappeared behind him, closer than before. It gave him the feeling of being stalked. He felt better when he had the deadly little harpoon pointed at it, though he suspected that it could probably flash in and take off half his thigh or the front of his belly before he could pull on the trigger.
This was part of it — the fear as well as the lust of the hunt. Water builds up an enormous resistance. He would not dare release the barb unless it was within six inches of the ’cuda. If he merely stung the fish, it might strike back in rage.
The slow seconds passed. And suddenly he realized that the last thing he wanted to do was slant up to the surface for air. Even as a black bass in an inland lake will strike viciously at times at almost. any small object dropped onto the surface of the water, the barracuda will dart and snap at anything which moves too quickly.
It was so close he could see a deep, puckered scar on its brown-gray flank.
The barracuda let itself sink until it was a bare three feet off the bottom, its lean head still pointed toward him. With enormous caution he moved slowly toward it. To his amazement, it duplicated his motion, moving ever so slowly toward him. It seemed to Pierson that it was much like two fighters coming warily out at the bell for the first round.
He stood absolutely still, his finger cramped on the trigger. The barracuda slanted up as it moved closer, and he followed it with the barb. Two feet, a foot and a half, a foot. It paused. He moved the barb up toward it, an inch at a time, his back aching from the tautness of his arms and shoulders.
Now! He thrust and fired at the same instant. The familiar thud of the explosion hammered against his ear plugs. He clung to the gun and fell slowly into a sitting position. He moved like a slow-motion film, but the ’cuda had disappeared like dark flame. He decided to take the gun up with him. It was rugged enough to stand a certain amount of dragging along the bottom, but this monstrous fish might not be quelled for an hour, even with the barb deep in its guts.
He crouched — and in that instant the barracuda reappeared like magic a bare yard in front of his face. He brought his gun arm up in panic. He saw the metal shaft protruding from its side, pointed downward, saw the line that stretched off in a gradual upward curve. Blood stained the water around the wound.
With his right arm across his face, he reached over and pulled the knife free with his left hand. It was a feeble weapon. The gun, still in his right hand, kept him anchored to the bottom.
The barracuda watched him as though, with evil intelligence, it wanted him to savor to the full the anticipation of its chomping razor teeth. Pierson had never heard of any fish, ’cuda or otherwise, which would ignore the pain-born panic of the barb to return calmly to the hunter. He could not help but believe that this fish had reasoned out what had hurt it and had come to exact payment.
Suddenly a great, swift, twelve-foot shadow slammed down out of the darkness, and the water was badly roiled by sand swept up from the bottom. It was as though a dim candle had been blown out in a dingy room. Pierson remained fixed in pure panic, and as the sand settled he saw the torpedo shape of what he recognized as a huge shark looming toward him, turning on its side, the killer teeth bared in the half-moon mouth.
Even as he realized that this deep-sea beast had no right to come into this sheltered bay, it was upon him, moving with the ungraceful, swift waddle of the shark. He thrust at it with the knife, dropping the gun. He felt the knife turn against the tough hide and felt the pain as the hide took the flesh from his knuckles.
The shark has a blind and unreasoning hunger. It had swum into the scent of blood and the tiny brain sent but one message to the vast, highly specialized body. Eat! Eat! A shark like this, once that message leaves its brain, will continue to tear and feed even when it has been torn open and other sea creatures are feeding on its own tail and belly.
He had stayed to the very limit of his endurance. His vision darkened and his lungs were making convulsive heaves. Only his will, keeping his throat closed, prevented the rebellious lungs from expelling what was left of the stale air and sucking in the water. He could not turn, and even if he could, he could not have seen the shark. Red spots shot across his blackening vision. He knew that, with his wounded hand, it was a matter of seconds until the shark found him and tore him to edible bits.
He jumped upward with all the fading strength of his legs. His fins he had lost long ago in the first furious attack. He made feeble, climbing motions with his arms. He anticipated the slashing, ripping bite in every part of his body. The blood from the barracuda had brought the shark. Now his blood would send the shark streaking up after him, rolling to bring into play that incredible mouth.