He found some driftwood he could use, and also another shell for his collection. In the late afternoon, he also speared another crab in his lagoon, albeit a smaller one that had come to sample the contents of its kin’s broken shells. It was another good day.
But the next day, he had no luck at all for food. The only thing he found was another large shell in the water. It was huge conch, spiny and a foot long.
Standing knee-deep in the water, he admired its beauty. But it was odd as the shell hadn’t been there before, and as it was empty, it certainly hadn’t crawled there. Also, the night had been calm and no waves entered his lagoon to wash it there. Must have been the tide… somehow, he thought.
“Another beauty.” He added it to his collection.
The next day was the same, no crabs, and only a few fish in his shallows, but once again, another magnificent specimen of a shell, although this one even further out and closer to the edge of the sandbank.
Ben reached in to lift it. Again, it was a fantastic shell, but instead of looking at it, his eyes never left the water. The drop-off still was fairly shallow here, and crystal clear, so he didn’t see anything other than the clumps of weed and patches of corals and sponges. But today, his sixth sense alarms were going off.
He squinted. At the bottom of the sandbank slope, there were two more shells; big, unique ones. He wanted them, and he stared for a moment. There was nothing close by, and the water was clear and warm.
But he just couldn’t bring himself to wade in or dive into the deeper water.
“Nah, not today.” He turned and shuffled back to the shoreline.
The next day, Ben woke extremely hungry. He’d dined again on pterodon eggs, but his large frame craved protein. The sky was just turning an azure blue and was cloudless to the horizon. The air was still and the morning sea mist was rapidly burning off. He could see from his cave perch the large torpedo shapes of fish out at the breakwater in his lagoon. He wanted them. His hunger demanded them.
Today’s the day, he thought.
Ben climbed down, looked once again up and down the sand, and then hefted his spear and crossed to the rocks and then headed out along the breakwater. It took him 15 minutes to make it toward one of the deeper ends of his ocean pool. The rocks formed a barrier but were more like broken teeth in that they let the tide run through between them, and on high tides obviously also let in good-sized fish, without anything larger gaining access.
On the inner side was the lagoon, and on the other, the vast ocean. He leaned forward on one of the rocks to stare out at the magnificent sea. Where he was, it looked deep. So deep, he couldn’t see the bottom, and it was dark indigo that might have been 20 feet deep or 100.
Ben leaned further forward and looked northward. He could see another jutting promontory several miles up the coast. He wondered what it would be like if he went there, keeping along the coastline until he came to America. Would it feel like home? He doubted it.
He pulled in a deep drought of warm sea air, flooding his lungs, and scanned the horizon. Oddly, there were no plesiosaurs anymore — gone home or chasing schools of fish somewhere else. Or for all he knew, they were there, just diving deep.
Ben continued to watch for a few more moments; it made him feel uneasy. One thing he knew was that the ocean was just as dangerous as any jungle and staring into the deep-dark blue might mean that something was staring right back at him and he’d never even know.
Ben turned back to the calm of his lagoon. On this side, the water was like a massive swimming pool. But even though the water looked inviting and the sun already warm on his shoulders, he couldn’t quite bring himself to dive in—yet.
He liked the idea of having his own personal swimming pool and aquarium. But he needed to be cautious — it was what kept him alive so far, and looking down, the water was deeper here and the weed could hide a multitude of things he had no idea even existed. He read somewhere once that it was a one in a million chance that an animal became fossilized. That meant there could be thousands of creatures that evolution tried out that we didn’t even know about.
As Ben stared into the lagoon’s depths, silver fish longer than his arm skimmed back and forth along the surface. There were oysters on the water’s edge, and he used the butt of his spear to break a few free and extract their meat. He was tempted to eat the pulpy, grey meat then and there, but today, he had other plans. He mashed them in his hand and tossed the remains onto the surface before him. He hoisted his spear and eased down a little closer to the water.
In seconds, silver torpedoes rocketed through the cloud of debris, picking off the larger portions, and then literally swarming to then look like knots of boiling mercury.
Ben only had to jab into the center of the cauldron of feeding fish to feel his spear strike flesh. He then hoisted a good eight-pounder from the water.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.”
He brought it to him, and then lowered it to the rocks beside him where he carefully pushed it off the blade of his spear and used the sharp edge to sever its neck to kill it.
By the size, Ben thought two fish would make a nice meal, and probably breakfast. He rinsed the blood from his hands and left his first catch on the rock close by, bleeding out, and turned back to the water. The oyster debris had gone, save for a milky cloud that a few fish glided through sensing the food, but not finding any.
Ben eased a little bit closer to the water but saw that the fish were thinning out rapidly as they lost interest now that the food was gone. He kept his spear ready, but in a flash, the fish vanished. He could smash another few oysters open or maybe use the head of the fish he’d just caught as bait. He turned to look at it.
“What the fuck?”
It was gone.
The rock was still smeared with blood, and he was certainly high enough not to have had any waves wash it off, but there was no sign. He had left it on a flat rock, just between two boulders that created the barrier between the lagoon and the ocean. Blood had leaked down the side of the rock that washed between the two bodies of water.
He looked up, checking for any pterodons, but though there were a few, even the small ones’ wings flapping sounded like you were shaking out a wet towel, so no way they could creep up on him.
Ben stared hard back into the water of the lagoon. The fish was as dead as they come, and there was no silver body floating on the surface. He stepped lower, peering deeper into the water — it was impossible to see the bottom because of the weed, but he was sure there was no silver shape down there.
Ben was furious and for a few seconds, contemplated diving down to feel around at the base of the weed — somehow, the fish must have slipped off the rock and glided down in amongst that forest of weed. All his work was wasted—crap, he fumed, as he had been proud of his success.
“Fuck it,” he muttered. The sun was getting hotter, but for some reason, he felt a chill run up his spine and he looked one way then the other. He didn’t see any threats, but he was spooked now, and his Special Forces intuition was setting off a warning.
“Okay, maybe just one fish today, and then I head home,” he whispered, squinting out over the lagoon. He began to step down closer to the water, planning on cracking open another few oysters when what felt like a wet glove latched onto his ankle… and then stuck there.