Crazy Boy And His Poem Of The Sea

At last they arrive at Cape Torrens. Roger Frogg takes them out in his boat.

Soon they are bobbing over the dive site.

I'll stay up top, says Roger. The rest of you can go down. You first Jacques, you're the expert.

Vello has already got all his gear on, and perhaps doesn't hear Roger Frogg.

Looks like he doesn't want to go first, says Anita.

I'll go first, says Arthur. I've done it before.

Excellent, says Dan Diver. Got everything? Want a writing slate?

Yes, says Arthur. I might write a poem.

You idiot, says Sweezus. They're for messages.

Wait and see, says Arthur, dropping backwards gracefully.

Plop.

Anita goes next.

Plop.

Then Sweezus.

Plop.

Then Dan Diver, with an underwater camera.

Plop. Swooosh!

Okay, says Roger. Now you.

He gives Vello a friendly push towards the railing.

Oh, is it my turn? Vello drops in like a stone.

Down, down goes Vello, twenty five metres. Bloop bloop bloop bloop.

Down twenty five metres to the bottom where the Portland Maru lies waiting.

Vello gazes at the weed-covered steel entrails of the Portland Maru, sponges and mussels, seaweed, cnidarians, worms and crustaceans floating rhythmically backwards and forwards, eeuuw eeuuw wursh wursh.

Is that a wheel, no.... argh!.... a blue fish!

No it's Arthur. Arthur has a writing slate, with a yellow pen on a string. He is writing.

The water is murky.

A seal frolics by. What the devil is he doing?

A zebra fish follows a wrasse through the rusted steel bars of an open prison.

Sweezus swims overhead, what big feet he has. No, they're his flippers.

Vello spots Diver Dan.

Diver Dan is filming him.

Curses. Do I look like Jacques Cousteau?

Vello waves, in a way that befits a man at home in the ocean.

Dan waves back. Points towards Arthur.

Arthur is holding up his slate.

What has he written?

And from then on I bathed in the poem of the sea infused with stars and lactescent, devouring the azure verses...

That crazy boy.