They got up and walked along the beach to the tent. Mr Krest heard their voices and came out to meet them. “No dice, eh?” He scratched angrily at an arm pit. “Goddam sandfly bit me. This is one hell of a god-awful island. Liz couldn’t stand the smell. Gone back to the ship. Guess we’d better give it one more going-over and then get the hell out of here. Help yourselves to some chow and you’ll find cold beer in the icepack. Here, gimme one of those masks. How do you use the dam’ things? I guess I might as well take a peek at the sea’s bottom while I’m about it.”
They sat in the hot tent and ate the chicken salad and drank beer, and moodily watched Mr Krest poking and peering about in the shallows. Fidele Barbey said: “He’s right, of course. These little islands are bloody awful places. Nothing but crabs and bird dung surrounded by too dam’ much sea. It’s only the poor bloody frozen Europeans that dream of coral islands. East of Suez, you won’t find any sane man who gives a damn for them. My family owns about ten of them – decent-sized ones too, with small villages on them and a good income from copra and turtle. Well, you can have the whole bloody lot in exchange for a flat in Paris or London.”
Bond laughed. He began: “Put an advertisement in The Times and you’d get sackloads . . .” when, fifty yards away, Mr Krest began to make frantic signals. Bond said: “Either the bastard’s found it or he’s trodden on a guitar-fish,” and picked up his mask and ran down to the sea.
Mr Krest was standing up to his waist among the shallow beginnings of the reef. He jabbed his finger excitedly at the surface. Bond swam softly forward. A carpet of sea-grass ended in broken coral and an occasional niggerhead. A dozen varieties of butterfly and other reef-fish flirted among the rocks, and a small langouste quested towards Bond with its feelers. The head of a large green moray protruded from a hole, its half-open jaws showing the rows of needle teeth. Its golden eyes watched Bond carefully. Bond was amused to note that Mr Krest’s hairy legs, magnified into pale tree-trunks by the glass, were not more than a foot away from the moray’s jaws. He gave an encouraging poke at the moray with his spear, but the eel only snapped at the metal points and slid back out of sight. Bond stopped and floated, his eyes scanning the brilliant jungle. A red blur materialized through the far mist and came towards him. It circled closely beneath him as if showing itself off. The dark blue eyes examined him without fear. The small fish busied itself rather self-consciously with some algae on the underside of a niggerhead, made a dart at a speck of something suspended in the water, and then, as if leaving the stage after showing its paces, swam languidly off back into the mist.
Bond backed away from the moray’s hole and put his feet to the ground. He took off his mask. He said to Mr Krest, who was standing gazing impatiently at him through his goggles: “Yes, that’s it all right. Better move quietly away from here. He won’t go away unless he’s frightened. These reef-fish stick pretty well to the same pastures.”
Mr Krest pulled off his mask. “Goddam, I found it!” he said reverently. “Well, goddam I did.” He slowly followed Bond to the shore.
Fidele Barbey was waiting for them. Mr Krest said boisterously: “Fido, I found that goddam fish. Me – Milton Krest. Whadya know about that? After you two goddam experts had been at it all morning. I just took that mask of yours – first time I ever put one on, mark you – and I walked out and found the goddam fish in fifteen minutes flat. Whadya say to that eh, Fido?”
“That’s good, Mr Krest. That’s fine. Now how do we catch it?”
“Aha.” Mr Krest winked slowly. “I got just the ticket for that. Got it from a chemist friend of mine. Stuff called Rotenone. Made from derris root. What the natives fish with in Brazil. Just pour it in the water, where it’ll float over what you’re after, and it’ll get him as sure as eggs is eggs. Sort of poison. Constricts the blood vessels in their gills. Suffocates them. No effect on humans because no gills, see?” Mr Krest turned to Bond. “Here, Jim. You go on out and keep watch. See the darned fish don’t vamoose. Fido and I’ll bring the stuff out there” – he pointed up-current from the vital area. “I’ll let go the Rotenone when you say the word. It’ll drift down towards you. Right? But for lands sakes get the timing right. I’ve only got a five-gallon tin of this stuff. ‘Kay?”