The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke

Author:Arthur C. Clarke
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780575000803
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2011-06-01T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XV

“HOW NICE IT is,” said Franklin, as he relaxed lazily in the contour-form chair on the porch, “to have a wife who’s not scared stiff of the job I’m doing.”

“There are times when I am,” admitted Indra. “I don’t like these deep-water operations. If anything goes wrong down there, you don’t have a chance.”

“You can drown just as easily in ten feet of water as ten thousand.”

“That’s silly, and you know it. Besides, no warden has ever been killed by drowning, as far as I’ve ever heard. The things that happen to them are never as nice and simple as that.”

“I’m sorry I started this conversation,” said Franklin ruefully, glancing around to see if Peter was safely out of earshot. “Anyway, you’re not worried about Operation Percy, are you?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m as anxious as everybody else to see you catch him—and I’m still more interested to see if Dr. Roberts can keep him alive.” She rose to her feet and walked over to the bookshelf recessed into the wall. Plowing through the usual pile of papers and magazines that had accumulated there, she finally unearthed the volume for which she was looking.

“Listen to this,” she continued, “and remember that it was written almost two hundred years ago.” She began to read in her best lecture-room voice, while Franklin listened at first with mild reluctance, and then with complete absorption.

“In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening for a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more arose, and slightly gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this Moby Dick? thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on reappearing once more, like a stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod, the negro yelled out—‘There! there again! there she breaches! Right ahead! The White Whale! The White Whale!’

“The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab’s in advance, and all swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with oars suspended, we were awaiting its appearance, lo! in the same spot where it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to catch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.

“As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk,

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