Past seventy years of age, lean as a
toothpick, and shrivelled like a mummy, he was doing what few young
athletes of my race would do or could do. It was forty feet to
bottom. There, partly exposed, but mostly hidden under the bulge
of a coral lump, I could discern his objective. His keen eyes had
caught the projecting tentacle of a squid. Even as he swam, the
tentacle was lazily withdrawn, so that there was no sign of the
creature. But the brief exposure of the portion of one tentacle
had advertised its owner as a squid of size.
The pressure at a depth of forty feet is no joke for a young man,
yet it did not seem to inconvenience this oldster. I am certain it
never crossed his mind to be inconvenienced. Unarmed, bare of body
save for a brief malo or loin cloth, he was undeterred by the
formidable creature that constituted his prey. I saw him steady
himself with his right hand on the coral lump, and thrust his left
arm into the hole to the shoulder. Half a minute elapsed, during
which time he seemed to be groping and rooting around with his left
hand.
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