San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1895-05-26
CAUGHT BY A CLAM.
BY CHARLES STUART PRATT.

zone does not usually regard the
slam as q dangerous ANIMAL" re-
marked my friend, Jack Ballantine, as
he shook a silver pepper.box over a
plate of the delectable Little Neck
bivalves yet the narrowest escape of
my life was from a clam"
Jack B~allantine was an old school
mate. remembered him as the ad-
Senturous spirit among the boys, but
had not seen him since we graduated
from the Latin high school, O dozen
years before, till that very day.
Coming down town to business in the
morning, I had met him face to face by
the frog pond, and we had engaged to
dine together and bring our life-stories
up to date.
mot being a dyspeptic, on otherwise
impaired In your body said I, smiling
Across to his sturdy bronzed face, ''your
terrible clam could hardly have been of
the Little Neck sort"
Hardly" replied Ballanttne, with a
laugh 1.-The clap that captured me
would have made'a meal for a regular
fairy-tale giant It weighed probably
twenty pounds and its tremendous
shells four @ Ave hupdyed pounds
more"
you mnst mean the giant Gam of
East Indian waters?" observed I, in
qutringT. II believe the single shells
of that great bivalve are sometimes
used for h~py~wehr fonts In Catholic
churches
"Yes, and in ne kAandsfO ceaua for
babies bathtubs,' said Rallantine.
"The particular tridacna gigas In ques-
ton, however, with which I had q brief
hut fearful scquaintapce, was alive,
md O dozen tsthnms deep in tropic
watersAin the Torres strait, beoveen
Queensland and New Guinea"
So, while we-wstsed then next course,
Ballantine began She story q hts ex>
traordinary adventure.
e belieYe you went to your mAe tn
London, after Latin school &C,
quaintance," remarked /. "You wrote
me on arriving there but not after,
ward" &-zsssHFS=r zx "
Yes. Uncle Ballantine had mining
and Pearlfng interests in Queensland,
and l went out almost immediately aft
r reaching London. I wss located at
CooktowTn, on the northeast coast"
~The region and the life were full Of
interest to me, and I soon became fam
liar with mining on land and pearling
at sea We had quite a fleet of luggers
vessels of five to twenty tons, two
short masts, and manned with crews of
half a dozen natives, Kanakas, Japs
Chinese, or Nalays, maybe.
Zone Of our captains was an old Nam
tucket whaler, and | now and then
went out to the fishing grounds with
hip
ION one of these pearling trips we
went up the coast, around Cape York,
into Torres strait. 1t vas there ! had
my narrow escapefrom a clam.
~Almost at the start we struck rich
bottom, and our diver was bringing up
three or four hundred pairs of shells a
day-worth about that number OF dol
lars By the end of the month we had
q cargo of eight or ten tons OF urse
the mother-of-pearl lining of the shells
Is the bread and butter of the business
The round pearls of the jeweler are the
cake Tor perhaps | should say the pie,
being in New England.)
az always did have an irresistible
desire to get at the inside of things, and
see the wheels go round and l had
long wanted, for once at least, to touch
deep-sea bottom, and behold the mar
wells OF which l had heard
1.-THE captin tried to dissuade me-
He had been a diver himself, and knew
from personal encounter the dangers of
the descent But as usual, l had my
own way, though it was nigh to being
for the last time.
"At last the face glass was set in
place, and l stepped over the side of
the lugger. 1 slipped off the wet lower
round and sank, sank, down, down,
down, into the depths of waters.
THAT sudden delirious descent was
measured by seconds, yet l lived an
g of vision and sensation, as a drown
ing man does-all the nightmare i'm
aginings the captains black tales and
warnings had projected into my
dreams of the night before seemed
about to be realized in double terror
then, in a flash, all mental distress
was blotted out by overpowering
physical sensations, suffocating press
ure, to which Poe's inquisition chamber
were paradise.
81 struggled s~pasmodically, l be-
lieye 1 shrieked Then with a clash
the agony ceased, and my lead
weighted feet pressed the air within
my armor, and went bounding over
the sea bottom like an India rubber
tepuis ball.