Blueback by Tim Winton

Author:Tim Winton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742537399
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia

When they got to the anchored boat at Robbers Head Abel eased the boat down to dead slow then cut his motors so they could drift up alongside. Costello’s compressor roared and his flags snapped in the breeze.

The deck of Costello’s boat was awash with blood. Abel had speared fish nearly every day but he had never seen such slaughter as this. Fish lay in huge slippery mounds and so many of them were under-size. Abel saw blue morwong, trevally, sweep, boarfish, harlequins, breaksea cod, groper, jewfish and samsons stiffening in the sun or quivering slowly to death. Behind the steering console stood crates of writhing abalone and a box of illegal crayfish.

‘We should chuck the abs back over the side,’ Abel said. ‘They might survive.’

‘You step on that boat, son, and you’ll get horribly hurt. I won’t have it.’

Abel sighed and pushed his boat clear. They drifted back in the breeze away from the dive zone.

‘Now what?’ asked Abel.

Abel’s mother was snapping on a weight-belt and wetting her mask.

‘I want you to stay with the boat, you understand? It’s important.’

‘But Mum!’

She went over the side before he could argue any further. He watched her fins flash away into the distance. Abel had no intention of staying dry. He anchored the boat, pulled on his gear and rolled out into the clear, cool water.

He swam across to the red boat, climbed up the ladder and began emptying crates of abalone over the side. Then he dived back in and followed the bright, trailing hoses down to the blossom of bubbles that marked where the divers worked. Once he found them he swam back to the surface and watched from there. In a scattered mass behind them, falling like snow, abalone were finding their way back onto the reef. Some were dead and knots of little fish picked at them. But the divers didn’t look back. They lay on the rugged bottom with spearguns.

One diver pointed something out to the other. Bubbles smoked back from his head so that he looked like a dragon. There was a blue flash ahead of them. Abel’s heart sank. He knew exactly what it would be. He took a breath and dived.

He was only halfway to the bottom when he saw Blueback dart out from behind a boulder. He was as big as a barrel; he made a big target. A spear flashed silver. It flew by Blueback’s head and whanged into hard rock. The fish shuddered for a moment, staring at the divers and then retreated a little way.

Abel knew why. It was all the abalone he’d tipped into the water. Blueback was wary but he couldn’t resist all that food. Behind the divers, swarms of smaller fish were feasting and Blueback wanted to be in on it. Only the two men lay in his way. He flicked back and forward, excited, blinded by his appetite.

Abel ran out of air. He shot back to the surface. Blueback was doomed now, he knew it. In a moment or two a spear would hit him in the gills and the water would go pink with his blood.

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