“We ought to be clearing out of here.”
“A shark’s a kitten compared to him! “
“Let’s speak to the boss.”
There was a patter of bare feet. Yawning and scratching a hairy chest Pedro Zurita came on deck. A pair of canvas trousers was all he had on; a revolver holster dangled from a broad leather belt. Zurita approached the divers. The lantern light revealed a swarthy face, crumpled with sleep, curls of thick hair escaping onto the forehead, black eyebrows, a pointed moustache and greying goatee.
“What’s up?”
His self-assured voice and deliberate movements calmed the divers.
They spoke all at once.
Baltasar raised a hand to silence them.
“We’ve heard him-the ‘sea-devil’,” he said when order was termporarily restored.
“You dreamt it,” Pedro said sleepily.
“We didn’t. We all heard his horn,” shouted the divers.
Again Baltasar waved them to silence.
“I heard the horn myself. That was him all right. There’s nobody at sea can blow a horn like that. We ought to be getting away from here, and lose no time about it.”
“Old wives’ tales,” said Pedro Zurita. He didn’t like the idea of sailing from the pearling ground with all those oysters on board, stinking and still not ready for opening. But it was like running his head against a stone wall, trying to talk the divers into staying. They shouted discordantly, flung their arms about and threatened to abandon the schooner and walk to Buenos Aires if Zurita didn’t weigh anchor.
“Curse you and the ‘sea-devil’,” he said finally. “You win. Well weigh anchor at dawn.” And grumbling and cursing he went below.
He was no longer sleepy. Lighting the lamp he got a cigar going and began pacing up and down his small cabin. His thoughts turned to the mysterious creature that had been haunting their part of the estuary for some time now, striking terror into the fishermen and seaside villagers.
Sailors and fishermen would tell tales about it, with many a timid glance over the shoulder, as if afraid that the monster might surprise them even as they spoke about it.
The creature was believed to have helped some people and harmed others.
“It’s the sea-god,” said the older Indians, “him as comes out of the ocean once in a thousand years – to restore justice on earth.”
The Catholic priests exhorted their superstitious Spanish flock to seek salvation in religion, saying that the sea-monster was a visitation of the wrath of God for their neglect of the Holy Catholic Church.
Rumours spread and at last reached Buenos Aires. For weeks the “sea-devil” made headlines in the sensation-hungry press. Any unaccounted-for loss of schooner or fishing-craft, any theft of nets or fish catch were all the “sea-devil’s” doing. But there were other stories as well-of big fish mysteriously deposited in fishing boats, of men saved from drowning.
At least one of these swore that when he was going under for the last time somebody caught him from behind and sped him shorewards and onto the beach, disappearing behind the surf the very moment he struggled to his feet and looked back.
Nobody had seen the “sea-devil” or rather nobody was credited with having seen it. Though, of course, there were some who called heaven to witness that the creature had a head adorned with horns and a goat’s beard, the legs of a lion and the tail of a fish or described it as an enormous toad with legs shaped like a man’s.
At first the authorities paid no attention to all these rumours and newspaper articles, hoping for the sensation to fizzle out as newspaper sensations do. But rumours led to apprehension and apprehension to alarm, especially among the fishermen. They were afraid to put out to sea; catches declined; Buenos Aires was experiencing a shortage of fish. The authorities decided it was time to intervene. A force of coastguard cutters and police launches was mustered and given orders “to detain a person of unknown identity that is causing alarm and panic among the seaside population.”
For a fortnight the task force combed the Rio de la Plata and the coast with nothing to their credit but several Indians detained for spreading rumours likely to cause alarm and panic.
The chief of the police issued an official announcement to the effect that the “devil” only existed in the rumours spread by some ignorant people, already detained and about to receive the punishment they deserved, and admonished the fishermen to scorn the rumours spread and resume their useful trade.
This helped for a time, but not for long: soon the “devil” was up to new pranks.
Some fishermen were wakened in the dead of night by the bleating of a kid that nothing short of magic could have put into their boat, lying as she was a goodish way offshore. Other fishermen hauled in their nets to find them slashed to pieces.
Overjoyed by the reappearance of the “devil” the newspapers now clamoured for the opinion of science. Nor had they to wait for long.
Scientists claimed that a sea-monster capable of intelligent acts could not exist in that part of the ocean unknown to science. They went on to say that this did not necessarily apply to greater ocean depths, though even there they would not expect to find such a monster. They tended to agree with the off-the-record opinion of the chief of the police who thought that some practical joker was at the bottom of it all.
But not all scientists shared that opinion. Some referred in their arguments to Konrad Hessner, world-famous naturalist, who left us descriptions of the sea-maiden, sea-devil, sea-monk and sea-bishop.
“When all is said and done many of the things propounded by ancient and medieval scientists have been borne out in our times for all modern science’s endeavours to ridicule them out of existence. Divine creation is truly inexhaustible and we scientists, more than anybody else, are called upon to practise modesty and caution in our conclusions,” they wrote.
These last apparently believed more in religion than in science and their lectures were more like homilies.
Finally a scientific expedition was equipped and dispatched to settle the scholarly wrangle.
The members of the expedition found no “devil” but they learned a great deal about the “unknown person’s” goings (the older members insisted that the word “person” be changed for the word “creature”).
The newspapers carried the expedition’s report, which said;
“1. In several places on the beaches we examined we found narrow footprints of a distinct human shape. Though leading from and back to the sea, they might have been made by people from boats.
“2. The nets we examined had cuts of the type produced by sharp instruments.
They might have been caught on sharp underwater crags or twisted metalwork of wrecks.
“3. A report – brought to our attention-of a dolphin that had been carried by a storm ashore, well clear of the water, and dragged back into the sea by someone who had left behind what looked like clawed footprints, has been carefully looked into.
“We are fully satisfied that the dolphin in question had been restored to its element by some kindhearted fisherman. Nor would this have been the only instance of kindness on the part of fishermen towards dolphins. It is common knowledge that dolphins in pursuit of fish sometimes help the fishermen in that they drive fish to the shallows inshore. The alleged claws of the footprints could have been the work of the witnesses’ imagination.
“4. The kid might have been brought by boat and slipped on board by some practical joker.”
The scientists had a lot more to say in their attempts to explain away the “devil’s doings”. They were convinced that no sea creature could have performed them.
But the scientists’ explanations did not satisfy everybody.