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Part One

"Sea Devil"

A stuffy January night of the Argentinean summer has come. The black sky was covered with stars. The Meduza was calmly at anchor. The stillness of the night was not disturbed by the splash of the wave or the creak of the rigging. The ocean seemed to be in a deep sleep.

Half-naked pearl divers lay on the deck of the schooner. Tired of work and the hot sun, they tossed and turned, sighed, and cried out in a heavy slumber. Their arms and legs twitched nervously. Perhaps in a dream they saw their enemies - sharks. On these hot, windless days, people were so tired that, having finished fishing, they could not even lift the boat onto the deck. However, this was not necessary: nothing foreshadowed a change in the weather. And the boats remained overnight on the water, tied to the anchor chain. The yards were out of alignment, the rigging was ill-tightened, and the unstowed jib quivered a little in the slight breeze. The entire deck area between the forecastle and poop was littered with heaps of pearl shells, fragments of coral limestone, ropes on which catchers sink to the bottom, canvas bags where they put the found shells, empty barrels.

Near the mizzen mast stood a large barrel of fresh water and an iron ladle on a chain. There was a dark stain of spilled water around the barrel on the deck.

From time to time one or another catcher would get up, staggering half asleep, and, stepping on the feet and hands of the sleeping ones, would wander to the barrel of water. Without opening his eyes, he drank a ladle of water and fell down anywhere, as if he was drinking not water, but pure alcohol. The catchers were thirsty: it is dangerous to eat before work in the morning - a person in the water experiences too much pressure - so they worked all day on an empty stomach until it became dark in the water, and only before going to bed they could eat, and fed them with corned beef.

At night the Indian Balthazar was on watch. He was the closest assistant to Captain Pedro Zurita, owner of the schooner Medusa.

In his youth, Balthazar was a famous pearl diver; he could stay under water for ninety or even a hundred seconds - twice as long as usual.

“Why? Because in our time they knew how to teach and began to teach us from childhood,” Balthazar told young pearl divers. “I was still a boy of about ten years old when my father gave me an apprenticeship for a tender for José. He had twelve students. This is how he taught us. He will throw a white stone or a shell into the water and order: “Dive, get it!” And every time it goes deeper. If you don’t get it, you will flog it with a line ^[1] or a whip and throw it into the water like a little dog. Dive again. That's how he taught us to dive. Then he began to teach us to get used to being under water longer. An old, experienced catcher will sink to the bottom and tie a basket or net to the anchor. And then we dive and untie under water. And until you untie it, don't show yourself upstairs. And if you show yourself, you will receive a whip or a line.

They beat us mercilessly. Not many survived. But I became the first catcher in the whole district. I made good money. "

Having grown old, Balthazar left the dangerous trade of the pearl seeker. His left leg was mangled by shark teeth, and his side was torn off by an anchor chain. He had a small shop in Buenos Aires and traded in pearls, corals, shells and marine rarities. But on the shore he was bored and therefore often went to pearl fishing. Industrialists appreciated him. No one knew better than Balthazar the Gulf of La Plata, its shores and those places where pearl shells are found. The hunters respected him. He knew how to please everyone - both catchers and owners.

He taught young fishermen all the secrets of fishing: how to hold their breath, how to repel a shark attack, and, with a good hand, how to hide a rare pearl from the owner.

The industrialists, the owners of schooners, knew and appreciated him because he was able to accurately evaluate pearls at one glance and quickly select the best ones in favor of the owner.

Therefore, the industrialists willingly took him with them as an assistant and adviser.

The odor of rotting pearl mollusks wafted from the shore - they were left to rot to make it easier to choose pearls: the shell of a live mollusk is not easy to open. This smell would have seemed disgusting to an unaccustomed person, but Balthazar inhaled it not without pleasure. For him, a vagabond, a pearl seeker, this smell reminded him of the joys of a free life and the exciting dangers of the sea.

After selecting the pearls, the largest shells were transferred to the Meduza. Zurita was prudent: he sold the shells to the factory, where they made buttons and cufflinks.

Balthazar was sleeping. Soon the cigar fell out of his weakened fingers. The head bowed to the chest.

But then a sound came to his consciousness, coming from far away from the ocean. The sound came closer. Balthazar opened his eyes. It seemed as if someone was blowing a horn, and then, as if cheerful, a young human voice shouted: “Ah!” And then an octave higher: “Ah!”

The musical sound of the trumpet did not resemble the sharp sound of a steamship siren, and the cheerful exclamation did not at all resemble a cry for help from a drowning man. It was something new, unknown. Balthazar got up, it seemed to him as if he immediately felt refreshed. He went to the side and vigilantly looked around the expanse of the ocean. Desolate. Silence. Balthazar kicked the Indian lying on the deck with his foot, and when he got up, he said softly:

- Screaming. This is probably he . ..

“I can’t hear,” the Huron Indian answered just as quietly.0027 [3] , kneeling and listening. And suddenly the silence was again broken by the sound of a trumpet and a shout:

– Ah!..

Huron, hearing this sound, bent down as if under a whip.

“Yes, it must be he ,” said the Huron, chattering his teeth in fear.

Other catchers woke up too. They slid down to the lantern-lit place, as if seeking protection from the darkness in the faint rays of yellow light. Everyone was sitting close to each other, listening intently. The sound of the trumpet and the voice were heard once more in the distance, and then everything fell silent.

- This is he ...

- "Sea Devil", whispered the fishermen.

- We can't stay here anymore!

- It's scarier than a shark!

- Call the owner here!

The slapping of bare feet was heard. Yawning and scratching his hairy chest, the owner, Pedro Zurita, came on deck. He was shirtless, wearing nothing but linen trousers; a revolver holster hung from a wide leather belt. Zurita approached the people. The lantern illuminated his sleepy, bronzed face, thick curly hair that fell in strands on his forehead, black eyebrows, fluffy, raised mustaches and a small beard with graying hair.

- What happened?

His gruff calm voice and confident movements calmed the Indians.

They all started talking at once.

Balthazar raised his hand to silence them and said:

- We heard the voice of his ... "sea devil".

- Dreamed! Pedro answered sleepily, lowering his head to his chest.

- No, I didn't imagine it. We all heard "ahh" and the sound of the trumpet! shouted the fishermen.

Balthazar silenced them with the same movement of his hand and continued:

- I heard it myself. Only the "devil" can trumpet like that. No one at sea screams and trumpets like that. We need to get out of here quickly.

“Fairy tales,” Pedro Zurita answered just as languidly.

He did not want to take from the shore to the schooner the still rotten, fetid shells and weigh anchor. But he failed to persuade the Indians. They were excited, waving their arms and shouting, threatening that tomorrow they would go ashore and go on foot to Buenos Aires if Zurita did not raise anchor.

- Damn this "sea devil" with you! Good. We will raise anchor at dawn. - And, continuing to grumble, the captain went to his cabin.

He no longer wanted to sleep. He lit a lamp, lit a cigar, and began to pace up and down the small cabin. He thought of that incomprehensible creature that had appeared in the local waters for some time now, frightening fishermen and coastal residents.

No one has seen this monster yet, but it has already reminded of itself several times. Fables were told about him. The sailors told them in whispers, looking around timidly, as if afraid that this monster would not overhear them.

This creature harmed some, unexpectedly helped others. “This is a sea god,” said the old Indians, “he comes out of the depths of the ocean once a millennium to restore justice on earth.”

Catholic priests assured the superstitious Spaniards that it was a sea devil. He began to appear to people because the population is forgetting the Holy Catholic Church.

All these word-of-mouth rumors reached Buenos Aires. For several weeks, the "sea devil" was a favorite topic of tabloid newspaper chroniclers and feuilletonists. If, under unknown circumstances, schooners, fishing boats sank, or fishing nets deteriorated, or the caught fish disappeared, the “sea devil” was blamed for this. But others also said that the "devil" sometimes threw large fish into the fishermen's boats and once even saved a drowning man.

At least one drowning man assured that when he was already plunging into the water, someone grabbed him from below behind his back and, thus supporting him, swam to the shore, hiding in the waves of the surf at the moment when the rescued one stepped onto the sand.

But the most amazing thing was that no one saw the "devil" himself. No one could describe what this mysterious creature looks like. There were, of course, eyewitnesses, they rewarded the "devil" with a horned head, a goat's beard, lion's paws and a fish tail, or depicted him as a giant horned toad with human legs.

Government officials in Buenos Aires at first ignored these stories and newspaper notes, believing them to be idle fiction.

But the excitement—mainly among the fishermen—was getting stronger and stronger. Many fishermen did not dare to go to sea. Fishing was reduced, and the inhabitants felt the lack of fish. Then the local authorities decided to investigate this story. Several Coast Guard steamboats and motor boats were sent along the coast with orders to "detain an unknown person who is sowing confusion and panic among the coastal population."

The police scoured La Plata Bay and the coast for two weeks, detained several Indians as malicious spreaders of false rumors that sowed alarm, but the "devil" was elusive.

The chief of police published an official announcement that there was no "devil" and that all these were just inventions of ignorant people who had already been detained and would be punished, and urged the fishermen not to trust the rumors and take up fishing.

It helped for a while. However, the jokes of the "devil" did not stop.

One night, the fishermen, who were quite far from the shore, were awakened by the bleating of a goat, which, by some miracle, appeared on their longboat. Other fishermen's nets were cut up.

Delighted by the new appearance of the "devil", the journalists were now waiting for the explanations of the scientists.

The scientists were not long in coming.

They believed that in this part of the ocean there could not exist a sea monster unknown to science, performing acts that only a person is capable of. “It would be a different matter,” scientists wrote, “if such a creature appeared in the little-explored depths. ” Yet they did not allow such a being to act intelligently. Scientists, together with the head of the naval police, believed that all this was the tricks of some mischievous person.

But not all scientists thought so. Some have referred to the famous German naturalist Konrad Gesner ^[4] who described the sea maiden, the sea devil, the sea monk and the sea bishop.

“In the end, much of what the ancient and medieval scholars wrote about was justified, despite the fact that the new science did not recognize these old teachings. Divine creativity is inexhaustible, and modesty and caution in conclusions befits us scientists more than anyone else,” they wrote.

It was difficult to call these modest and cautious people scientists. They believed in miracles more than in science, and their lectures were like a sermon.

In the end, a scientific expedition was sent to resolve the dispute.

The members of the expedition were not lucky enough to meet the "devil". But they learned a lot about the actions of the “unknown person” (the old scholars insisted that the word “persons” be replaced by the word “creatures”).

In a report published in newspapers, members of the expedition wrote:

"1. In some places on the sandbars, we noticed traces of narrow feet of human legs. The tracks came out from the sea and led back to the sea. However, such traces could be left by a person who drove up to the shore in a boat.

2. The nets we examined have cuts that could have been made with a sharp cutting tool. It is possible that the nets caught on sharp underwater rocks or iron fragments of sunken ships and broke.

3. According to eyewitnesses, a dolphin, thrown ashore by a storm, at a considerable distance from the water, was dragged into the water by someone at night, and footprints and, as it were, long nails were found on the sand. Probably some compassionate fisherman dragged the dolphin into the sea.

Dolphins, when hunting for fish, are known to help fishermen by driving them to the shallows. Fishermen often help dolphins out of trouble. The claw marks may have been produced by human fingers. Imagination made the marks look like claws.

4. The kid could have been brought in by boat and thrown by some joker.

Scientists have found other equally simple reasons to explain the origin of the traces left by the "devil". They came to the conclusion that no sea monster could perform such complex actions.

Yet these explanations did not satisfy everyone. Even among the scientists themselves, there were those to whom these explanations seemed doubtful. How could the smartest and most stubborn joker do such things without being seen by people for so long? But the main thing that the scientists were silent about in their report was that the "devil", as it was established, performed his exploits for a short time in various places located far from each other. Either the "devil" was able to swim with unheard of speed, or he had some special devices, or, finally, the "devil" was not one, but there were several of them. But then all these jokes became even more incomprehensible and threatening.

Pedro Zurita was reminiscing about this whole mysterious story as he paced the cabin.

He did not notice how dawn broke and a pink ray penetrated the porthole window. Pedro put out the lamp and began to wash.

While dousing his head with warm water, he heard frightened screams coming from the deck. Zurita, without finishing washing, quickly climbed the ladder.

Naked catchers, with a linen bandage around their hips, stood by the side, waving their arms and shouting indiscriminately. Pedro looked down and saw that the boats that had been left on the water for the night were untied. The night breeze carried them quite far out into the open ocean. Now the morning breeze carried them slowly towards the shore. Boat oars scattered across the water floated across the bay.

Zurita ordered the catchers to collect the boats. But no one dared to leave the deck. Zurita repeated the order.

“Get into the clutches of the “devil” yourself,” someone replied.

Zurita took hold of the revolver holster. The hunters retreated and crowded around the mast. They looked at Zurita with hostility. A collision seemed inevitable. But then Balthazar intervened.

“The Araucanian is not afraid of anyone,” he said, “the shark has not eaten me up, and the “devil” will choke on old bones. And, folding his arms above his head, he threw himself off the side into the water and swam to the nearest boat.

The Seekers now approached the ship and watched Balthazar fearfully. Despite his old age and bad leg, he was an excellent swimmer. In a few strokes, the Indian swam to the boat, caught the floating oar and climbed into the boat.

- The rope is cut with a knife, - he shouted, - and well cut! The knife was sharp as a razor.

Seeing that nothing terrible happened to Balthazar, several fishermen followed his example.

Riding a dolphin

The sun had just risen, but it was already beating mercilessly. The blue-silver sky was cloudless, the ocean was motionless. Meduza was already twenty kilometers south of Buenos Aires. On the advice of Balthazar, the anchor was dropped in a small bay, near a rocky shore, rising from the water in two ledges.

The boats scattered across the bay. On each boat, according to custom, there were two catchers: one dived, the other pulled out the diver. Then they switched roles.

One boat came quite close to the shore. The diver grabbed a large piece of coral limestone tied to the end of the rope with his feet and quickly sank to the bottom.

The water was very warm and clear - every stone at the bottom was clearly visible. Closer to the shore, corals rose from the bottom - motionless frozen bushes of underwater gardens. Small fish, shimmering with gold and silver, darted between these bushes.

The diver sank to the bottom and, bending over, quickly began to collect shells and put them in a bag tied to a strap on his side. His fellow worker, a Huron Indian, held the end of the rope in his hands and, leaning over the side of the boat, looked into the water.

Suddenly he saw that the diver jumped to his feet as fast as he could, waved his arms, grabbed the rope and pulled it so hard that he almost pulled the Huron into the water. The boat rocked. The Huron Indian hurriedly lifted his comrade and helped him onto the boat. With his mouth wide open, the diver was breathing heavily, his eyes wide. His dark bronze face turned grey, so pale was he.

- Shark?

But the diver could not answer - he fell to the bottom of the boat.

What could scare him so at the bottom of the sea? Hurona bent down and began to peer into the water. Yes, something was wrong there. Small fish, like birds that saw a kite, hurried to hide in the dense thickets of underwater forests.

And suddenly the Huron Indian saw how something like crimson smoke appeared from behind an angled underwater rock. Smoke slowly spread in all directions, turning the water pink. And then something dark appeared. It was the body of a shark. It slowly turned and disappeared behind a ledge of rock. Crimson underwater smoke could only be blood spilled at the bottom of the ocean. What happened there? Hurona looked at his comrade, but he lay motionless on his back, gasping for air with his wide-open mouth and staring blankly at the sky. The Indian took up the oars and hurried to take his suddenly ill comrade aboard the Medusa.

Finally the diver came to his senses, but seemed to have lost the gift of words - he only mumbled, shook his head and puffed, protruding his lips.

The catchers on the schooner surrounded the diver, impatiently awaiting his explanation.

- Speak up! shouted the young Indian at last, shaking the diver. “Speak if you don’t want your cowardly soul to fly out of your body.”

The diver shook his head and said in a hollow voice:

– I saw… the “sea devil”.

– His ?

- Yes, speak, speak! the hunters shouted impatiently.

- I look - a shark. The shark is swimming right at me. End me! Big, black, has already opened its mouth, now it will eat me. I look - it is still swimming ...

- Another shark?

- The Devil!

- What is he like? Does he have a head?

– Head? Yes, it seems there is. Eyes on a glass.

“If there are eyes, then there must be a head,” said the young Indian confidently. “The eyes are nailed to something. Does he have paws?

- Feet like a frog. The fingers are long, green, with claws and webbing. Himself shines like fish scales. He swam up to the shark, flashed his paw - shark! Blood from the belly of a shark...

– What kind of legs does he have? one of the hunters asked.

– Legs? the diver tried to remember. - There are no legs at all. There is a big tail. And at the end of the tail are two snakes.

- Who are you more afraid of - sharks or monsters?

“Monsters,” he answered without hesitation. “Monsters, although it saved my life. It was he ...

- Yes, it was he .

"Sea devil," said the Indian.

“A sea god who comes to the aid of the poor,” corrected the old Indian.

This news quickly spread through the boats in the bay. The catchers hurried to the schooner and brought the boats aboard.

Everyone surrounded the diver rescued by the "sea devil" and forced him to repeat the story endlessly. And he repeated, telling more and more details. He remembered that red flames flew out of the monster's nostrils, and the teeth were sharp and long, the size of a finger. Its ears moved, it had fins on its sides, and a tail like a paddle in the back.

Pedro Zurita, naked to the waist, in short white trousers, shoes on his bare feet and a high wide-brimmed straw hat on his head, shuffling his shoes, walked around the deck, listening to the conversations.

The more the narrator got carried away, the more convinced Pedro was that all this was invented by the catcher, frightened by the approach of the shark.

“However, maybe not everything is made up. Someone ripped open the shark's belly: after all, the water in the bay turned pink. The Indian is lying, but there is some truth in all this. Strange story, damn it!

Here, Zurita's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a horn suddenly coming from behind a rock.

This sound struck the crew of the Medusa like a thunderclap. All conversations stopped immediately, faces turned pale. The hunters gazed with superstitious horror at the rock from which came the sound of the trumpet.

Not far from the rock, a herd of dolphins frolicked on the surface of the ocean. One dolphin separated from the herd, snorted loudly, as if answering the calling signal of the trumpet, quickly swam to the rock and disappeared behind the cliffs. A few more moments of tense waiting passed. Suddenly, the catchers saw a dolphin appear from behind a rock. On his back sat astride, like on a horse, a strange creature - the "devil", about which the diver had recently spoken. The monster had the body of a man, and on its face one could see huge, like an old onion clock, eyes that sparkled in the rays of the sun like car lights, the skin shone with delicate blue silver, and the hands looked like frogs - dark green, with long fingers and membranes between them. Legs below the knees were in the water. Whether they ended in tails or were they ordinary human legs remained unknown. The strange creature held a long twisted shell in its hand. It once again blew this shell, laughed with a merry human laugh, and suddenly cried out in pure Spanish:

- Hurry, Leading ^[5] , go ahead! - patted the dolphin's shiny back with a frog hand and spurred its sides with its feet.

And the dolphin, like a good horse, added speed.

The Seekers cried out involuntarily.

The extraordinary rider turned around. Seeing people, he slid off the dolphin with the speed of a lizard and disappeared behind its body. A green hand appeared from behind the dolphin, hitting the animal on the back. The obedient dolphin plunged into the water along with the monster.

The strange couple made a semicircle under the water and disappeared behind an underwater rock…

This whole extraordinary trip took no more than a minute, but the audience could not recover from their amazement for a long time.

The catchers were screaming, running around the deck, clutching their heads. The Indians fell to their knees and conjured the god of the sea to spare them. The young Mexican climbed the mainmast in fright and shouted. The Negroes rolled into the hold and huddled in a corner.

There was nothing to think about fishing. Pedro and Balthazar had difficulty restoring order. The Meduza weighed anchor and headed north.

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Alexander Romanovich Belyaev (1884–1942) is one of the founders of Soviet science fiction. He created a whole series of fascinating works that popularize the most interesting issues of science and technology in an entertaining way. This edition includes well-known novels: "Amphibian Man", "Star of KETs", "Dublve's Laboratory", "Wonderful Eye". CONTENTS: Amphibian Man Zvezda KETs Laboratory Dubleve Miraculous Eye Artist

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Amphibian Man

PART ONE

"SEA DEVIL"

It was a sweltering January night in the Argentinean summer. The black sky was covered with stars. The Meduza was calmly at anchor. The stillness of the night was not disturbed by the splash of the wave or the creak of the rigging. The ocean seemed to be in a deep sleep.

Half-naked pearl divers lay on the deck of the schooner. Tired of work and the hot sun, they tossed and turned, sighed, and cried out in a heavy slumber. Their arms and legs twitched nervously. Perhaps in a dream they saw their enemies - sharks. On those hot, windless days, people were so tired that, having finished fishing, they could not even lift the boat onto the deck. However, this was not necessary: nothing foreshadowed a change in the weather. And the boats remained overnight on the water, tied to the anchor chain. The yards were out of alignment, the rigging was ill-tightened, and the unstowed jib quivered a little in the slight breeze. The entire deck area between the forecastle and poop was littered with heaps of pearl shells, fragments of coral limestone, ropes on which catchers sink to the bottom, canvas bags where they put the found shells, empty barrels. Near the mizzen mast stood a large barrel of fresh water and an iron ladle on a chain. There was a dark stain of spilled water around the barrel on the deck.

From time to time, one or another catcher would get up, staggering half asleep, and, stepping on the feet and hands of the sleeping ones, would wander to the barrel of water. Without opening your eyes; he drank a ladle of water and fell down anywhere, as if he was drinking not water, but pure alcohol. The catchers were thirsty: in the morning before work it is dangerous to eat - a person in the water experiences too much pressure - so they worked all day on an empty stomach until it became dark in the water, and only before going to bed they could eat, and fed them with corned beef.

At night, the Indian Balthazar was on watch. He was the closest assistant to Captain Pedro Zurita, owner of the schooner Medusa.

In his youth, Balthazar was a famous pearl diver: he could stay under water for ninety and even one hundred seconds - twice as long as usual.

“Why? Because in our time they knew how to teach and began to teach us from childhood,” Balthazar told young pearl divers. “I was still a boy of about ten years old when my father gave me an apprenticeship for a tender for José. He had twelve students. This is how he taught us. He will throw a white stone or a shell into the water and order: “Dive, get it!” And each time he throws it deeper and deeper. If you don’t get it, you will flog it with a line1 or a whip and throw it into the water like a little dog. "Dive again!" That's how he taught us to dive. Then he began to teach us to get used to being under water longer. An old experienced catcher will sink to the bottom and tie a basket or net to the anchor. And then we dive and untie under water. And until you untie it, don't show yourself upstairs. And if you show yourself, get a whip or a line.

They beat us mercilessly. Not many survived. But I became the first catcher in the whole district. I made good money."

Having grown old, Balthazar left the dangerous trade of the pearl seeker. His left leg was mangled by shark teeth, and his side was torn off by an anchor chain. He had a small shop in Buenos Aires and traded in pearls, corals, shells and marine rarities. But on the shore he was bored and therefore often went to pearl fishing. Industrialists appreciated him. No one knew better than Balthasar the Gulf of La Plata, its shores and those places where pearl shells are found. The hunters respected him. He knew how to please everyone - both catchers and owners.

He taught young fishermen all the secrets of fishing: how to hold their breath, how to repel a shark attack, and, with a good hand, how to hide a rare pearl from the owner.

The industrialists, the owners of schooners, knew and appreciated him because he was able to accurately evaluate pearls at one glance and quickly select the best ones in favor of the owner.

Therefore, the industrialists willingly took him with them as an assistant and adviser.

Balthazar was sitting on a barrel and slowly smoking a thick cigar. The light from a lantern attached to the mast fell on his face. It was elongated, not high cheekbones, with a regular nose and large beautiful eyes - the face of an Araucanian. Balthazar's eyelids drooped heavily and slowly rose. He was dozing. But if his eyes slept, then his ears did not sleep. They were awake and warned of danger even during deep sleep. But now Balthasar heard only the sighs and mutterings of the sleepers. The smell of rotting pearl mollusks wafted from the shore - they were left to rot to make it easier to choose pearls: the shell of a live mollusk is not easy to open. This smell would have seemed disgusting to an unaccustomed person, but Balthazar inhaled it not without pleasure. To him, a vagabond, a pearl seeker, this smell reminded him of the joys of a free life and the exciting dangers of the sea. 9Ol000 (tales)"

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Read online "Amphibian Man", Alexander Belyaev - LitRes

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Part One

"Sea Devil"

Riding a dolphin

Alexander Belyaev ★ Amphibian Man (tales) read the book online for free

amphibian people (novel): Brief content, description and annotation

Alexander Belyaev: other books by the author

Amphibian Man (stories) - read an introductory passage online

Learn more