SOUTH SEA PEARL LAGOON 

John, a sailor, lowered the diving helmet over my head and the pump started going. I could feel the fresh air pouring in from the valve at the side of the helmet.

Slowly I descended the ladder and the water closed over my head. The pressure increased against my eardrums. I swallowed and the pressure was relieved. The ladder had been made with brass rungs conveniently spaced a foot apart. I counted them and stood on the sea bottom 25 feet below the surface. The water about me was as clear as air, melting in the distance into a pearly-blue fog.

The strange shapes of coral castles rose about me, fantastic in outline. Around my feet stony blossoms of delicate texture spread their lacy panicles glowing with soft rose, light blue, rich purple, pale green, yellow, and tan.

Cliffs of living coral overhung me as I advanced, rising in terraces adorned with massive rounded heads of brain- and orb-corals resembling giant mushrooms-purple, green, and golden yellow. These flanked deep, mysterious caverns, within whose depths I could perceive wavering light beams dancing down from concealed openings, in shafts of weird, luminous blue.

The sloping threshold of a cavern near by was protected by a low rampart of shells, crab fragments, and odds and ends of coral arranged so carefully that they at once attracted my attention.

Suddenly a tapering, serpentlike tentacle was thrust forth waveringly; then another, and another, advancing in coils that increased in size as they became more fully disclosed.

The bulb-shaped body and baleful eyes of an octopus glided forward until the whole creature oozed over the edge of the coral shelf, four or five of its sucker-adorned arms writhing downward till they hung suspended over the cliff, while the rest still clung with their tapering tips to projections and crevices within the cavern.

As I watched, it released itself without effort and darted out into the water, bulbous body forward, tentacles trailing in a doubly divided train as it propelled itself by shooting a jet of water toward the rear from its spoutlike siphon. Almost immediately it settled down in another crevice, watching me continually with its basilisk-like gaze.

It did not seem disposed to interfere with me, so I looked up toward the surface, where the keels of our two boats floated oddly, with the long, slender train of the brass-rope ladder dangling downward. A strange shape had broken through the silvery roof of water.

I soon realized it was one of the undersea camera tripods being lowered on the end of a rope. As it came within reach, I steadied it to the sea floor, untied it, and laboriously set it in position, working against the pressure of the watery atmosphere.

The rope was quickly hauled up and in a few minutes one of my brass undersea camera boxes descended toward me.

Lifting the heavy box to the tripod top, I looked around for the octopus, hoping to get a picture of it, but it had disappeared.

I started to adjust the camera to photograph a beautiful vista through the growths of fairylike corals, when suddenly a great brown-and-yellow-striped grouper with a bright-red saddle spanning its shoulders flipped out of a cave toward my left, swam behind me, and darted directly between my legs!

Then to my amazement, after passing under the tripod, it rose immediately in…"