The Shark (Wilson)

by John Fleming Wilson

 

THE SHARK

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Axel Gustafsen refers to his employer in figurative language. The simile is apt but uncomplimentary, and “Skin” Flint plans his revenge in a way calculated to please other sharks than himself.

I’LL get you yet!” whined Tom Flint known along Honolulu waterfront as “Skin” Flint, and he wrung his injured fingers. Axel Gustafsen, deep-sea diver and now indignant employee of Flint’s, smiled faintly and called down from the wharf’s edge to a man to bring up the air hose. Then he turned to Flint with an ugly gleam in his blue eyes.

“I told you when I took this job that I needed the best and costliest gear when I’m working at such depths. You buy the cheapest you can get. It does not stand thirty feet pressure. Luckily it didn’t drown me. Now either give me the coin for a new, good air hose or—”

“Looky here,” said Flint, stilling his wrath, “that’s a good hose and—”

Axel’s heavy hand wasn’t quick enough. But he snatched the long coil of white rubber hose from his helper and flung the thing in Flint’s face, knocking him down. Then, without another word, he strode away. He came back a moment later to say quietly and grimly, “Sharks like you don’t hand me anything. Now you can get some one else to risk his life in your rotten suits.”

When Skin Flint figured up the day’s work that night he discovered that a saving of $16.72 on the air hose he supplied Axel Gustafsen with would cost him the exact sum of $2000, the forfeit he had put up for the fulfillment of his contract with the Island Steamship Company for the recovery of certain goods on the sunken steamer Maori. The wreck lay in ninety feet of water and there was no other diver nearer than San Francisco who would undertake such a job at double the price Axel Gustafsen had contracted for.

Within the weedy body of Skin Flint was a weedy soul, filled with small and noxious growths. And the soil was ripe for another. In his last words the diver had unconsciously sown the seed.

Three weeks did Flint brood over the wrong Gustafsen had done him. True, the hose had parted; but all hose is liable to accidents. It had cost money, too. And in his miserable heart he suspected that the diver had exaggerated the depth at which the Maori lay. That would be merely business. Then why didn’t Axel do business in a business fashion? Flint still gnawed his fingers and slowly there grew into his mind a thought.

He went up on the train to Pearl Harbor and hired a sampan to take him outside. There, rocking on the easy swells, Skin Flint did some strange fishing while the Japanese crew drowsed under the dirty awning. They were somewhat surprised to see that their employer had buoyed his heavy fish line and that the wooden mark was floating as if there were a heavy weight on the other end.

The next day Skin Flint hired the same sampan and returned to where the buoy still rose and fell. Once more he fished, this time with a five-pound piece of raw pork. He caught a twelve-foot shark and ordered the men to row back into the harbor, where he gave them the big fish for nothing. He returned to Honolulu with a smile on his pale lips.

“Working on a contract up this way?” asked the train conductor carelessly.

“Yes,” said Flint, his smile changing into a grin.

The next day he sought Axel Gustafsen and opened the conversation by saying promptly: “Gustafsen, I have a job for you, you to furnish your own suit and gear, which I’ll pay for.”

The diver considered him thoughtfully a moment. Flint tried to look amiable and good natured.

“What’s the job?”

“I was doing some survey work outside Pearl Harbor,” the contractor replied. “Lost a thousand-dollar case of instruments with all my notes and figures. I’ve seen a buoy about where I think it went down. About forty feet of water there.”

“I suppose you want the case brought up before the water spoils everything? To-morrow?”

Flint’s eyes shone. “Good! And I hope you won’t bear hard feelings.”

“That depends on whether you pay me five hundred for the job or not,” was the indifferent reply.

“That’ll include your gear?”

Gustafsen rose and stretched his big arms. “I have my own, now,” he said carelessly. “My own boat and my own men. Start at six o’clock in the morning?”

“Sure. I’ll take the train and go out in a small boat and point the place out,” Flint responded. “I’ll be much obliged.”

“All right. I’ll bring the case of things down here and you hand me a check for five hundred and I’ll hand over your property.”

For the third time the sampan, carrying Flint, crept out through the shining reaches of Pearl Harbor and toward the spot where the little buoy bobbed on the waves. The contractor could see the diving boat slowly coming in under the impulse of her sweeps. There was no wind. Skin Flint nodded to the Japanese to let the boat lie, and he peered over the side into the lucid depths. Far below he could barely see the white glimmer of the bottom. He strained his eyes, and his lips were compressed to bloodlessness as he searched the water. Last of all he quietly allowed to drop over the boat’s gunwale a heavy sack filled with raw meat. He followed its course downward. His eyes gleamed; for shadows gathered about it and there was a glint of another gray whiteness than that of the coral bottom, and the shadows thickened and moved and little swirls of water turned on the oily surface. Then the shadows vanished. The sack was gone. A torn speck of canvas flitted upward and finally floated at the top. Flint picked it up and the smile on his lips widened. Then he lay back and waited for the diving boat to come up.

When it was within hailing distance Flint rose and shouted, pointing to the wooden buoy that rose and fell with an almost imperceptible motion a hundred feet away.

“That’s your buoy, is it?” asked Axel Gustafsen.

“Yes, it was about there,” was the reply.

The diver glanced indifferently over at it and nodded to one of his Japanese helpers, who promptly picked up a hand lead and proceeded to sound the depth of the water while Gustafsen kicked off his shoes and prepared to get into his suit.

“What kind of looking affair is it?” he demanded when he was ready for the big helmet.

Flint leaned eagerly over the side of his sampan. “It was about five feet long and a foot square,” he said in a shaking voice. “It is brass cornered.”

Axel turned to the man with the sounding lead.

“Seven fathom, sah.”

“Well, I’ll just work around and find it,” the diver returned.

A moment later he had let himself down off the ladder and was gone in a swirl of foam, while two men worked the air pump and the other two held air hose and life line. As he descended, the contractor caught the flash of his big knife tied to one wrist, and his lids narrowed over his eyes. Then he worked with incredible swiftness over a thin linen sack that lay at his feet. Into it he dropped a heavy iron weight and then set in it an open gallon can filled with a red fluid—fresh beef’s blood. As he worked he glanced at his men to see if they observed him. They gave no sign. When he had finished he held the open mouth of the sack in one clenched hand and directed his men to pull towards the buoy.

A couple of sweeps of the paddles thrust his small craft almost to it. His crew stopped its progress fifty feet from the diving boat Flint slowly leaned over the gunwale and peered down.

There was a white glimmer of the bottom and a circular shadow moving towards him. The diver was at work. The glint of his ready knife flickered now and then. And as Flint stared down he seemed to see other shadows at some distance. At last the diver’s shadow was directly under his eyes. He drew a quick breath and with a soft, stealthy heave of his lean arm he lifted the linen sack over and let it slip into the water. It descended swiftly and a little crimson-black thread marked its passage.

He saw the sack strike the shadow that was Axel Gustafsen, and instantly there was a flicker of the knife. Flint leaned farther out. Other shadows were gathering. Then a dark cloud enveloped the shadow that was the diver and as if from a great distance Skin Flint heard a shout from the other boat and a rapid order. But he had no eyes for anything but the shadows below him. He saw the whole mass slowly rise, but the black cloud enveloped it and he laughed.

“Blood!” he muttered. "He cannot see to strike with his knife.”

The men on the diving boat yelled, and he heard the creak of the life line in the hoisting sheave. But the shadow was now a cloud of storm. Foam was rising from it and streams of darkness that made the contractor wring his fingers and say over and over again, “Blood! Blood!"

Then a great gray body leaped in the water, followed by other gray bodies, and now the madman’s lips muttered, “Shark! Shark! You called me a shark! The shark got you!”

And he leaned still farther over, wiping his hands on his silk handkerchief while the men in both boats beat on the surface of the foaming water with their oars and yelled.

Then a long, gray pillar rose from the cloud and Flint saw the great mouth of a shark as it flung itself up. Its prowlike nose was aimed directly for him. “Shark!” he muttered dazedly. And in his enormous passion he dipped exultant hands into the water.

The leaping body seized his arms and with one sweep of its powerful tail dragged him out of the boat, downwards.

And the men on the two boats that floated on the stained water stared into the crimson-black depths stolidly, while the little wooden buoy leaped on the swirls. Presently a silk handkerchief appeared. It swung gently up and down as a light breeze rippled the surface. As if at a signal, the two crews set themselves to their sweeps and rowed slowly away.