Although it only weighed just over ten pounds, it was over four feet long, a nickel bullet of muscle and hard flesh.
‘We shoot no more cudas,’ said Quarrel. ‘But for you I been in hospital for a month and mebbe lost ma face. It was foolish of me. If we swim towards it, it gone away. Dey always do. Dey cowards like all fish. Doan you worry bout those,’ he pointed at the teeth. ‘You never see dem again.’
‘I hope not,’ said Bond. ‘I haven’t got a face to spare.’
By the end of the week, Bond was sunburned and hard. He had cut his cigarettes down to ten a day and had not had a single drink. He could swim two miles without tiring, his hand was completely healed and all the scales of big city life had fallen from him.
Quarrel was pleased. ‘You ready for Surprise, Cap’n,’ he said, ‘and I not like be de fish what tries to eat you.’
Towards nightfall on the eighth day they came back to the rest-house to find Strangways waiting for them.
‘I’ve got some good news for you,’ he said, ‘your friend Felix Leiter’s going to be all right. At all events he’s not going to die. They’ve had to amputate the remains of an arm and a leg. Now the plastic surgery chaps have started building up his face. They called me up from St Petersburg yesterday. Apparently he insisted on getting a message to you. First thing he thought of when he could think at all. Says he’s sorry not to be with you and to tell you not to get your feet wet – or at any rate, not as wet as he did.’
Bond’s heart was full. He looked out of the window. ‘Tell him to get well quickly,’ he said abruptly. ‘Tell him I miss him.’ He looked back into the room. ‘Now what about the gear? Everything okay?’
‘I’ve got it all,’ said Strangways, ‘and the
‘Not much,’ said Bond. ‘But I’d like to get her away from him. She’s not one of his team.’
‘Sort of damsel in distress,’ said the romantic Strangways. ‘Good show. According to the C.I.A. she’s a corker.’
But Bond had gone out on the veranda and was gazing up at his stars. Never before in his life had there been so much to play for. The secret of the treasure, the defeat of a great criminal, the smashing of a Communist spy ring, and the destruction of a tentacle of SMERSH, the cruel machine that was his own private target. And now Solitaire, the ultimate personal prize.
The stars winked down their cryptic morse and he had no key to their cipher.
18 | BEAU DESERT
Strangways went back alone after dinner and Bond agreed that they would follow at first light. Strangways left him a fresh pile of books and pamphlets on shark and barracuda and Bond went through them with rapt attention.
They added little to the practical lore he had picked up from Quarrel. They were all by scientists and much of the data on attacks was from the beaches of the Pacific where a flashing body in the thick surf would excite any inquisitive fish.
But there seemed to be general agreement that the danger to underwater swimmers with breathing equipment was far less than to surface swimmers. They might be attacked by almost any of the shark family, particularly when the shark was stimulated and excited by blood in the water, by the smell of a swimmer or by the sensory vibration set up by an injured person in the water. But they could sometimes be frightened off, he read, by loud noises in the water – even by shouting below the surface, and they would often flee if a swimmer chased them.
The most successful form of shark repellent, according to U.S. Naval Research Laboratory tests, was a combination of copper acetate and a dark nigrosine dye, and cakes of this mixture were apparently now attached to the Mae Wests of all the U.S. Armed Forces.
