I knew I was going to have to go up for air very soon. My body would make me abandon the hunt in another second. My chest hurt, and I started getting that panicky smothering feeling that you get when you keep your head under the bathwater while your mom sees if you can beat your record for holding your breath. Now on top of running out of air, I was deeper than I had ever gone. My ears were ringing with pain, and I knew that if I waited to the last second, I would run out of breath and gasp in water before I made it back up. I already knew I would have to spit out the snorkel mouthpiece and just gasp for air when I resurfaced. There would be no time to blow the water out and then breathe in carefully.

I fired the spear gun because I wanted to at least try to get the octopus. Yet even as I fired I knew I had no chance of hitting it. I shot to the surface yelling all the way in my head because my ears and chest hurt so much. I managed to hold on to the spear gun, and as I swam up, ripped off my mask and snorkel and breathed out a lungful of carbon dioxide so I’d be ready to gasp in the oxygen as soon as my head was back in the air.

When I had taken two big breaths of air, I started to see in color again. Things had gone black and white the last couple of seconds underwater.

I checked to see if I had everything. I did. My mask and snorkel were in my left hand and my spear gun was in my right hand. I decided not to put my mask back on in case I dropped my gun. I didn’t ever want to have to dive that deep again.

I began to swim back to the shore. About halfway to the beach something odd happened. All of a sudden I felt things crawling on my right arm.

I let out a yell because I was startled, but then realized it was probably just a piece of rope or something like that floating in the water. Because my mask was off all I could see in the water were the reflections of the little white clouds. I couldn’t look below to see what was touching me without my mask.

Then I really screamed because this thing had me. It was winding around my arm, and it climbed up to my neck and started holding on to my chest. I even felt it touch my leg and stomach. So I screamed and screamed and called, “Dad! Dad!”