When I looked down to the sandy sea floor, the water was clear, but if I dived down, then looked off to the side, into the sea’s depths, the water fell away into a rich mysterious turquoise. A distant volume of water from which I could well imagine a sudden terrible looming shape appearing. A shark! Like the ones that assaulted Tintin in The Adventure of Red Rackham’s Treasure. If I looked the other way toward the rock wall of the shore I would see fish, startled by my appearance, dart into crevices. The tentacles of an octopus hastily pulled deep under a rock. A little cloud of sand and pebbles hanging for one instant in the clear water, disturbed by the octopus’s frantic escape from the looming of my body against the sun above—a threatening cloud blotting out the light. When I reached under the rock, the octopus jetted away, out the other side with a squirt of black oily ink left behind to confuse me. Not confused, I followed it, swimming above it as it hugged the sea bottom, its tentacles opening then shutting behind as it convulsed, surging forward, then stopping to surge once more. Finally it settled on the sandy floor, its color changing from the dark mottled gray of the rock wall to a drab speckled brown—a sandy shape on sand, but still not quite invisible if you knew where to look. I dived down to it and almost touched it. Then in a turbulence of panic, it shot off again, this time heading for the turquoise wall of deeper water. One last time I held my breath and dove down to it, now a distant shape twenty-five feet below me, a clear outline of brown against the near white sand of the bay. But the pain in my ears and the tightness in my chest told me that the octopus had won. I struggled to the surface and took a deep breath after blowing the water out of my snorkel. Unfortunately, I did not clear all the water from the tube. My next breath included a gurgling mouthful of saltwater, and my own spit caught in the curve of the snorkel pipe. Coughing, I poked my head above water, spat out the mouthpiece dripping with warm saliva, and sucked in a deep breath while treading water.

A moment later I readjusted the now-cold mouthpiece, tipped the quarter inch of water out of my almost airtight mask, took a slow breath to check if the tube was clear (it was), then ducked back into my quiet blue world. The octopus had vanished.

Heading back to the rock wall, I spotted a fish feeding in the undulating brown seaweed as it curled in the slight eddies of a quiet breaking surf. A surge of water so mild that the wake of any passing speedboat pulling a water skier caused twice the waves of the gentle summer swells.