A Dolphins Dream (44 page)
The spear struck the great fish and it quivered in its track and glided to a stop. He kicked to it as it sank and caught it at forty feet, slipping a hand in its gill. The fish was considerably longer than he and as thick as his shoulders were wide. By the time he regained his kick and pointed to the surface, he and the fish had sunk another ten feet and were still sinking. Kicking furiously to stop the descent and sapping the last of his breath, he finally halted the descent and began to slowly move upwards but at great expense of energy. Halfway he realized he had not the breath to make it to the surface, oxygen depletion had taken its toll and weakened his kick. Twenty feet from the surface he let go of the fish. Free of the burden he skyrocketed up and punched through the ceiling, gasping for air in the white capped seas. Putting his face back into the water and breathing in echoing blasts through the snorkel, he watched the fish finish its drift downward and settle on top of the reef. A white tip nosed the blood spoor twenty feet above it but had yet to connect the blood to the motionless fish beneath it. Gasping in breaths he raised his hand in signal to Moses who, in the steep troughs of the sea could not see him until he heard shouting over the sea and wind. The boat came alongside and he threw in the gunstock without its spear and called out breathless instructions.
"Cut the anchor away and give me the line. The fish is down on the bottom at around a hundred feet, too heavy for me to bring up. When you feel me pull hard twice, haul me up, fast."
Moses cut the anchor away and handed Compton the line.
"Can you dive to a hundred feet, Keli?"
"I can dive to it but I can't bring the fish back up. Pull like I’m a drowning man."
Taking the line, Compton hyperventilated deep breaths and dropped down. The single white tip had been joined by five others including an aggressive black tip. The sharks circled in anticipation above the mackerel. At that depth he gained momentum with each passing foot, at fifty feet he was plummeting to the bottom. Unable to halt or even slow his impetus, he collided into the back of a large shark, startling it into the other, temporarily scattering them in all directions. Falling to the mackerel, he secured a firm grip in its gill and tugged hard on the line. The line tightened and lifted him with fish in hand off the bottom. In the boat, Moses was pulling for all he was worth but the tonnage of water that compressed Compton and the fish to the sea floor generated a substantial load and the going was slow. He rose foot-by-laborious foot until at fifty feet he expelled half the air in his lungs to decrease the carbon dioxide buildup that was screaming at his brain for fresh air, fooling his body into believing that its need was not great. It was a dangerous maneuver, for now he could pass out without warning, a sudden hit, as if struck by a bullet at close range.
In the dimming light a shadow passed, staining the sea into an ominous darkness. Directly above Compton's head the massive body of a tiger shark, the Sea God, loomed like a great zeppelin. Compton could feel its hunger and in its size lay all that a man feared. He felt incredibly small and was shrinking by the moment in the presence of this lone survivor of the Jurassic. Before his mind spun its way into deterioration, Moses, unaware of the shark, pulled another hitch on the line and drove Compton’s head and shoulder into the white belly of the creature. In a thunderous body whip, the shark accelerated away bowling Compton over by the concussion and tearing the line from his hand. Righting himself, he began to kick frantically for the surface twenty-five feet away, knowing as he did that the kicking would invite the shark to turn and prey upon his flailing legs within the blood spoor of the fish. Dropping the fish wasn't considered and he pounded upwards, not looking down or behind or at anything but the surface twenty feet above. The white light of a thunderbolt exploded in his brain. His legs and arms tingled from lack of oxygen and he lifted the mackerel on an extended arm so that Moses might somehow reach the fish. Just as he broke the surface and gasped his first breath, a force with the power of Zeus hit the fish, nearly jerking his arm from his shoulder socket. His hand wedged into the gills could not be freed as the shark tore into the stomach of the mackerel. The sound of the ripping flesh was as distinct as a limb being torn from a great tree and as sickening as witnessing an arm or other such appendage floating free down a river of blood. It was as if his own stomach had been torn asunder, for a sickness came as the water swirled and sped by his face mask and into the viscera and blood that loomed and drifted like grand white maggots all about him. Suddenly all stopped and he managed another breath. There came a stillness that was itself foreboding and carried a doom unimaginable. He could not move for all the blood and intestines that mingled with his skin and caught in his hair and blinded him to all but that which lay a foot away. In that incarcerated nightmare his mind unleashed a terrible death that lay in the infinite next moment. His body, so sensitively tuned to the sea, betrayed him and acquiesced to the power of the mind which foretold the onslaught of jaws that would come unseen from any direction. Indefensible and vulnerable, he could only await in paralysis the next rush and the final assault. His body shook in anticipation of the Jurassic jaws and the force of ten thousand pounds of pressure squeezing his life into increments of seconds. He lay in the blood soaked slick awaiting his foreseen outcome, like one awaits the outcome in the final moments of a fatal car crash. Then from out of the sky and into the thick soup of guts a black arm reached and plucked him like God out of the jaws of death and into the boat, still holding the fish, his arm lodged in the gills. Moses freed his hand and attempted to swing the great fish into the boat. Its stomach gone, thirty pounds lighter, he was unable to hoist it in and so tied it off to a thwart.
“Keli, you looked like a finished man. All the blood. I thought the Sea God had killed you but ld not ive. The Sea God has spared you and you have brought a fish that no one in Fiji has ever caught. Compton did not answer but was heaving in great lung fills of air, not so much from the lack of oxygen but to reassure himself that he was alive and still capable of drawing a breath.
"Keli, that is the finest fish that has ever been seen in Fiji! It must be eighty kilos without the stomach! It is the greatest of the world records, eh!"
Compton tried to speak through heaving breaths but the words wouldn’t come.
“What happened down there? I saw the shark. It was the Sea God, eh. It came right under the boat and the line went loose. I feared your life was done."
Hunched over the seat, thoroughly spent, Compton was finally able to regain himself and when he spoke it was more to the bottom of the boat than to Moses.
"We better get that fish out of the water before the Sea God turns on it."
They hauled the fish into the boat and lashed it to the starboard side of the center bench and then to the stern where it extended two feet beyond the boat and hung in the water. Moses sat far to port at the outboard to trim the boat as best he could.
Compton could not take his eyes from the fish, feeling more the spectator than the solitary participant. It defies all logic, he thought, that a man could do such a thing on a breath-hold. He was astounded and humbled and filled with a grand sense of wonder for it all.
The weight of the fish in the burgeoning seas cost precious inches of freeboard and white-capped swells broke freely into the boat as it motored northwest towards Qamea. Moses bailed while at the helm but when the water line continued to rise he gave the bailing scoop to Compton. The engine strained under the weight of the fish and the stress of the quartering seas upon the hull was unremitting.
Within half an hour, nightfall struck them blinking into darkness. Moses located the western star and ran north at ninety degrees from it. Compton kept his wetsuit on because he was simply too tired to take it off. Moses had taken off his shirt and placed a leatherette blanket across his shoulders. The blackness sucked the triumph out of the moment as they hunched miserable and cold against the night sea. Twice the lashing on the fish broke and the bulk of its body slid into the sea nearly capsizing the boat from the sudden shift of weight. Periodically Moses would lift the gas can to gauge fuel consumption.
The sea pounded them at will for three straight hours. Into the fourth hour, with no land in sight and having no clear notion as to where they were or how far from Qamea they might be, the engine sputtered and finally died.
Moses’ voice pierced the darkness as if coming from the sky.
"We're out of gas, Keli. Now we find out if we are men, eh."
They could not row the boat with the fish on the starboard or port gunwales so it was lashed down the center. They sat on it with Moses in the middle and Compton in the stern. Moses rowed for an hour and then they exchanged places and Compton rowed for an hour. When one rowed the other bailed in rhythm to the oars. Neither ceased or slowed in their duties.
The dive had taken everything out of Compton and he did his work dazed, drifting in semi-delirium, confusing the white phosphorescent sea with the stars that hung in the low sky. He blindly steered by the star that was to be kept off his left shoulder. When he would get too far off course, Moses would signal with his hand to either the right or left and he would mechanically adjust. Surging, falling and rising, with nothing to fix the eye upon, he became sick and vomited as he rowed, convulsing into cramps that doubled him over. Moses relieved him at the oars and though he couldn't possibly have slept without falling off the fish, he could not account for the hours that passed nor for the silence that consumed him. His next awareness was of the sounds of the oars in the locks and only then did he realize that night sea had died and they were in the lee of the swell. Moses let the boat drift and retied the brake drum to the line and dropped it overboard.
"We spend the night here, Keli. This is Qamea."
They drank water and ate coconut meat and fell asleep where they sat.
Before dawn Moses was at the oars again. The island was less than a quarter mile away and the wind and heavy seas of yesterday gave no evidence of ever having existed.
"We catch the current now, take us right to Taveuni," said Moses, his spirits lifting and the smile returning to his face. "We get this fish weighed for the picture, eh."
Compton reached into the sea and splashed water on his face. He stretched his aching shoulders and back. "We aren't going to Taveuni. We're going to the village."
Moses nodded and smiled in understanding of everything that was left unspoken. "You not half a man anymore, Keli," and he bent enthusiastically to the oars.
"A Fiji man," declared Compton who in jest added, "who is being dreamed by a dolphin."
"Better to be a whole man being dreamed," said Moses lightheartedly, recognizing the denial, "than half a man who doesn't know what is life."
They rowed in silence for some time, each man drifting in his own world. Finally Moses spoke. “I am thinking…
Compton bolted out of his reverie, fully awake. “You are thinking?”
“It is a danger, eh. But I fear the village will have bad ideas if we tell them the true story of your deed. Such a feat has never been done by a Fiji man. They might start to believe that you have made the bargain with the Sea God. They will soon fear you and cast you out. Better we say you spear the fish, then the Sea God comes when the fish is tied to the boat and takes an offering. That way we all can rest.”
Compton smiled at the irony. “Done,” was all he said.
They arrived at the village and hung the fish by its tail on a tree. The entire village came down to view it. Small children touched it, old women gestured animatedly in its direction and the men quietly nodded in approval. Jokatama appeared at the outer edge of the gathering with his family but without Sinaca. Keli went to the fish and with Moses’ cane knife cut off the head, which was considerable, weighing close to fifty pounds and with outstretched arms presented it to Isikeli, who accepted it graciously and said, "Bula, Keli, Vinaka vana levu."
Keli returned to the fish and brought it down from the tree and cut off the end section that included the tail and presented it to Jokatama who was clearly moved by the gesture and whispered to one of his boys who ran off up the hill.
Keli had Moses instruct the village that the fish was to be divided up amongst them and that such a powerful fish would bring them healthy and happy lives. The men set to the fish with their cane knives as the boy arrived with Sinaca. Jokatama led her to Keli and put her hand into his, nodding once in approval. Sinaca shyly lowered her head, conscious that the women of the village were watching but unable to suppress a beaming smile. She turned her head to cast a look at Keli who, ever so gently, squeezed her hand.
Keli did not return to the United States nor did he again seek a fish whose size determined its merit in the world of records nor did he dig up the wristwatch that was buried beneath the fallen tree on Orchid Beach nor find cause to wear his glasses again.
After a proper courtship that lasted six months, Keli and Sinaca were married in the wedding hut. It was a grand wedding, a wedding of the gods, said the old women. Even the Paramount Chief of the Qamea attended. He was loud, drunk, corruptible and a disappointment to Keli. But the other villagers spoke well of him and passed no judgment. It was a traditional wedding that Moses approved of. There was food and kava but no beer on ice and there were no fights. Keli gave Sinaca a spear gusciousat he had purchased in the Somosomo General store and there was talk of what the two of them would do on the deep reef when the big wailu were running. Sinaca gave Keli a dark blue sulu with white flowers. Adi and Lavenia presented them with a grass mat they had woven for their bure. The sergeant came and giving perhaps the best gift of all declared that Keli was a Fiji man and could live on Qamea for as long as he wished, no questions asked, no permits required.