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By Root 596 0

his cigarette into the water and followed it over the side. Mason struck off in an entirely new direction and Hagen started to swim to the far end of the lagoon which seemed to be halted by a thick barrier of reeds. He forced his way in through the reeds for about fifty feet and then decided to go back. Afterwards he was never sure why he decided to go a little farther. The important thing was that he did and found himself on the edge of a small lagoon, roughly circular in shape and perhaps a hundred feet in diameter. The water was clear as glass and the bottom was white sand, the mud scoured clean away. It shelved steeply towards the centre and as he started to swim forward he felt afraid. In the other parts of the marsh the air was full of the clamour of a thousand living things but here not even the crickets sang. For a moment he shivered as he remembered stories he had heard as a child of fairy pools back home in Ireland, and then he said softly, 'Don't be a bloody fool,' and kept on swimming.

It was as if he was the first person ever to enter that place but he was not. He had known in his heart from the beginning that this was the place. He floated motionless, not far from the centre of the lagoon, and looked down at the launch for a moment, and then he took a deep breath and did a steep surface dive that carried him down through the clear water.

He could feel the pressure in his ears and swallowed a couple of times until it eased off and then he was hanging on to the deck-rail of the launch. He stayed there for a moment and had a quick look at the condition of the wreck and then he released his grip on the rail and shot to the surface.

As he came out into the bright sunlight and trod water, taking deep breaths of fresh air, he realized to his surprise that in front of him floated a roughly made canoe and sitting in it was a Chinese fisherman who looked as if he had just received the fright of his life. Hagen reached the canoe in one easy stroke and smiled and said: 'Do not fear. I am a man as you are.'

An expression of relief came to the fisherman's face. He spoke Cantonese in a debased form but Hagen found that he could follow it with reasonable ease. 'Praise the gods you are a man for I thought you were one of the water-devils that live in this evil place.'

Hagen pulled himself over the prow of the frail canoe and sat in the bottom. 'I come from a large boat over there,' he said, pointing through the reeds. 'Will you take me to it?'

The fisherman nodded and pointed down to the launch. 'This is an evil place and a water-devil lives in the wreck. It is death to dive in this place.'

'But I have just done it and lived,' Hagen pointed out.

The man considered the point and nodded wisely. 'Then the devil must be sleeping.'

They paused at the edge of the reeds and Hagen said, 'If it is such an evil place why do you come?'

Grief darkened the fisherman's face as he explained. He and his brother had discovered the launch, and his brother had insisted on diving. The launch must have been in a certain state of balance. Apparently it had heeled over while the brother was in the cabin and he had been trapped and drowned. Hagen had noticed a mass of damaged superstructure blocking the cabin door. This explained the unhappy man's fate. The simple explanation was not accepted by the fisherman who saw in the incident the action of a water-devil. 'The reason for his visits lay in his great sorrow, for his brother's soul was forever imprisoned in his body unless it was recovered. Only a resting place in the earth of the tribal burial island assured a soul of an after life.

As they came out through the reeds into the large lagoon Hagen said, 'I intend to dive again to the wreck and I shall recover your brother's body.'

The man placed a hand to his mouth in a gesture of awe. 'I do not think you are an ordinary man if you can do this thing, lord.' He bowed slightly. 'Your humble servant Chang whose people will do anything in their power to help you.'

They paddled up to the boat and Rose and O'Hara leaned over the side in surprise.