378 I N A G U A 



these animals had died, dropping their calcified remains in a 

 slow organic rain to the sea floor. The cliff was a vast funeral 

 pile of a million, million lives. The ocean currents welling up 

 from the depths had gathered it all there in one spot to make 

 the edge of a world. 



A shadow passed across the helmet. The shadow of the boat 

 I thought, and let the sand run between my fingers. The boat 

 was fully seventy feet away from the edge. It could cast no 

 shadow! 



I saw a darkened patch move slowly over the sand, slide 

 over the rounded edge and become nothingness with the gloom 

 beyond. I looked up and nearly yelled into the recesses of the 

 helmet. There, not fifteen feet above my head, was a great 

 manta, the most gigantic of all the devilfish. It was flying- 

 there is no other word for it— flying along in mid-water like 

 some great bat or monstrous pterodactyl, looking like a vision 

 out of the forgotten past. Flapping its great expanded wings, 

 it seemed to be soaring rather than swimming through the 

 water. 



I froze to the sand. The monster turned slightly, coming 

 dangerously close to the air line, swooped gracefully over the 

 edge, and faded into the depths. It must have measured fifteen 

 feet from wing tip to wing tip. 



I turned to grasp the life line to go to the surface and then 

 froze again. The fish was returning. To the right I saw its huge 

 bulk heading up out of the shadows. Up to the very brink it 

 came, curled one great fin high, and in a sweeping curve turned 

 up the edge of the bank. It headed straight for me, and I could 

 see its drooping cephalic fins, looking like great horns, held 

 straight downwards. Apparently they were being used for 

 rudders, but the thought flashed into my mind that they were 

 also used for sweeping prey into the mouth with its crushing 

 rows of cobblestone teeth. 



