They anchored just before sunset and so beautifully clear was the water that the sponges growing on the bottom were plainly visible, in the cross light, as Tom and Nicky rowed the glass bottomed dinghy slowly around on the smooth water.
“Isn’t this great” exclaimed Nicky. “See those sponges! How many kinds do you know, Tom?”
“Well, I know them by name, but not by sight,” Tom responded. “I have read that the marketable kinds are the yellow, the sheeps-wool, the gras—and I think one is called the glove. But there are more kinds that aren’t any good to sell, and they have to be recognized or else you’d get a lot that aren’t salable. There is the loggerhead, for one, I remember—and the potato sponge. And there are some that are spiny, and they hurt your hands if you grab them.”
“They don’t look like what we see in the stores,” Nicky commented. “They are sort of the same shapes, but they are black, and Mr. Neale says they feel like india-rubber to touch and they are smooth, with little craters or holes in the top—look! There’s a beauty. Is that a salable one, Tom?”
Tom peered down through the boat’s transparent bottom.
“I’ll bet it’s a sheeps-wool one,” he declared.
Nicky stood up and began to fling off his clothes.
“I’m going to dive for it!” he exclaimed. Tom, fired by his enthusiasm, and with the spirit of rivalry, began to “shuck” his clothes. It became a race toward nakedness—with no one but their comrades to observe, they often plunged into the limpid, translucent water in nature’s swimming suit. Cliff, observing them from the sloop, began to emulate their hasty disrobing. But Sam put a stop to their plan.
“Why?” demanded Cliff, rather warmly. “We’re not afraid of sharks!”
“No, sar,” called Sam, “but you are liable to dive crooked or if your foot slips you may go in backwards—and a cut from that sharp coral isn’t to be chanced, sar.” He showed Cliff a deep scar under his wooly hair, and Cliff, alarmed, called for his comrades to desist—until daylight, at least. They agreed reluctantly, and, looking down more carefully Nicky confided to Tom that he was glad they had. Overlooked in their excitement, they were able in calm study to observe a long, arrow-like frond of coral extending upward at an angle so close to the sponge that it must have been struck by any but a most expert diver.