Человек амфибия / The Amphibian

Alexander  
BELYAEV
THE AMPHIBIAN 
Translated by L. Kolesnikov

УДК 372.881.111.1
ББК 81.2 Англ 
 
Б44
ALEXANDER BELYAEV
THE AMPHIBIAN
Беляев, Александр Романович.
Б44  
Человек-амфибия : книга для чтения на английском языке / А. Р. Беляев. — [пер. с русск. яз. Л. Колесникова] — СанктПетербург : КАРО, 2024. — 270 с. — (Русская классическая 
литература на иностранных языках).
ISBN 978-5-9925-1334-9.
Предлагаем вниманию читателей классическое произведение 
советской фантастики — роман А. Р. Беляева «Человек-амфибия» 
(1928) в переводе на английский язык.
УДК 372.881.111.1 
ББК 81.2 Англ
© КАРО, 2024 
Все права защищены
ISBN 978-5-9925-1334-9

PART I
“THE SEA-DEVIL”
The close night of the Argentine midsummer came 
down on the sea. Stars pricked out in a sky that was 
a deep violet. The schooner Jellyfish lay quietly at anchor, with not a splash round her, not a creak on board. 
Ship and ocean seemed in deep slumber.
Half-naked pearl-divers sprawled on the deck. 
Worn out by the day’s work under a parching sun they 
tossed and groaned and cried out in their nightmarish sleep. Their limbs would jerk and twitch; perhaps 
they were fighting off sharks — their deadly enemies. 
The hot windless weather of which they were having 
a spell made people so tired that they couldn’t even 
hoist the boats on board at the end of a day’s work. Not 
that it seemed necessary: nothing indicated a change 
in weather. So the boats were left afloat, made fast to 
the anchor chain. Nobody had thought of tightening 
the shrouds or sheeting home the jib which fluttered 
faintly at each stray whiff of wind. From bowsprit to 

Alexander BELYAEV • THE AMPHIBIAN
4
taffrail the schooner was strewn with heaps of pearl 
shells, pieces of coral, lengths of diving cord, canvas 
sacks for putting shells in and empty barrels.
Against the mizzen-mast stood a big water barrel 
with an iron mug on a chain. The deck immediately 
round was stained dark with spilt water.
Every now and then a diver struggled up and staggered along, sleep-drunk, to the water barrel. Never 
opening his eyes he swallowed a mugful and dropped 
down anywhere on his way back, as if it were not water 
he had drunk but neat spirit. The divers were always 
thirsty. They went without morning meals, for underwater pressure made diving on a full stomach dangerous, so they worked without eating all through the day, 
till it grew too dark underwater. They had their meal 
before turning in — and that was of salt meat.
The Indian Baltasar, right hand of the schooner’s 
owner Pedro Zurita, had the night watch.
In his time Baltasar had been known far and wide 
as an excellent pearl-diver. He could stay underwater for as much as a minute and a half or even two 
minutes which was about twice as long as an average 
diver.
“How did we do it? They knew how to train in 
my day and started early,” Baltasar would say to the 
young divers.

PART I • “THE SEA-DEVIL”
“Just turned ten I was. My father took me to Jose, 
who owned a tender, for training. There were twelve 
of us, all kids like me. And this is the way he trained 
us. He’d throw a white pebble or shell into the water 
and order one of us to go and get it. And each time 
he found deeper and deeper places. If one of us had 
nothing to show for his diving Jose’d give him a lash or 
two of his whip and shove him overboard to try again. 
And it worked. Then he started to train us to keep 
longer times underwater. An experienced diver’d go 
down and make a basket or piece of netting fast to the 
anchor chain. Then down we went to untie the knots. 
And we weren’t allowed to come up before all the 
knots were undone. If we did we got the whip again.
“The amount of beating we took! Not everybody 
could stick it out. But it made a diver out of me — and the 
best in the district. And earned me a pretty penny too.”
Then the time had come when Baltasar had to give 
up the hazardous trade of a pearl-diver. He was no 
longer young and his left leg bore the terrible scars 
of a shark’s teeth and his side the marks of an anchor chain. He bought a small shop in Buenos Aires 
and started a trade in pearls, corals, shells and sea 
curios. But shore life bored him and once in a while 
he decided he needed a break and put out to sea with 
pearl-divers.

Alexander BELYAEV • THE AMPHIBIAN
6
He was always sure of a welcome, for what he 
didn’t know about the Rio de la Plata and its pearling 
grounds was just not worth knowing. He was welcomed by all — he knew how to please divers and 
owners alike. The young divers he taught the tricks of 
the trade: how to hold their breath underwater and 
to fight off sharks, and — when in specially expansive 
mood — how to keep an extra fine pearl out of the 
boss’s sight.
The owners he helped to sort out pearls and evaluate the best.
Baltasar was sitting on an upturned barrel, a thick 
cigar between his fingers, his face picked out of the 
darkness by the light of a lantern fixed to the mast. It 
was an elongated face with a finely cut nose and large 
handsome eyes — the face of an Araucanian. He was 
drowsing. But even when his eyes were asleep, his 
ears were not. They registered sounds and gave him 
warning in the deepest of sleep. There was nothing 
but the divers’ sighing and murmuring to hear. The 
smell of rotting pearl oysters wafted from offshore. It 
was part of the job: the shell of a dead mollusc opens 
more easily. What would have been an overpowering 
stench for an unaccustomed nose was near perfume 
for Baltasar’s. For him, a sea tramp that he was it 
meant all the pleasures and dangers of life at sea.

PART I • “THE SEA-DEVIL”
After the last pearl was extracted the largest shells 
were brought on board the Jellyfish. Zurita wasn’t one 
to let anything go to waste. He sold the shells to a factory where they made buttons and studs out of them.
Baltasar was asleep. The cigar had slipped from 
between his fingers. His chin rested on his chest.
A sound from far out at sea broke in on his sleep. 
Then it came nearer. Baltasar opened his eyes. What 
seemed to him the blast of a horn sounded again, followed by the cheerful ring of a young voice, repeated 
after an interval in a higher pitch.
The blast of the horn bore no resemblance to the 
harsh blare of ship’s siren, nor the cheerful voice to 
the cries of a man, fallen overboard. In fact it didn’t 
sound like anything Baltasar could think of. He rose. 
His sleep seemed blown away by a breeze. He went 
up to the rail and peered into darkness. His eye and 
ear detected nothing. Baltasar prodded with his foot 
a sleeping Indian into wakefulness.
“I heard a cry. That must be him,” he told the diver 
softly.
“I can’t hear a thing,” the Gurona Indian, now up 
on his knees and listening, said as softly. Suddenly the 
horn and voice pierced the heavy silence again.
The Gurona shrank as from a whip lash.

Alexander BELYAEV • THE AMPHIBIAN
8
“Yes, that’s him,” he said through his clattering 
teeth.
Other divers were waking up. They crawled towards the blotch of lantern light as though seeking in 
the yellowish beam protection from dreadful darkness. There they squatted, huddling together and 
straining their ears. The horn and voice came from 
far off again and was heard no more.
“That’s him — the ‘sea-devil’,” the divers were 
whispering.
“We ought to be clearing out of here.”
“A shark’s a kitten compared to him!”
“Let’s speak to the boss.”
There was a patter of bare feet. Yawning and 
scratching a hairy chest Pedro Zurita came on deck. 
A pair of canvas trousers was all he had on; a revolver holster dangled from a broad leather belt. Zurita 
approached the divers. The lantern light revealed 
a swarthy face, crumpled with sleep, curls of thick hair 
escaping onto the forehead, black eyebrows, a pointed 
moustache and greying goatee.
“What’s up?”
His self-assured voice and deliberate movements 
calmed the divers.
They spoke all at once.
Baltasar raised a hand to silence them.

PART I • “THE SEA-DEVIL”
“We’ve heard him — the ‘sea-devil’,” he said when 
order was termporarily restored.
“You dreamt it,” Pedro said sleepily.
“We didn’t. We all heard his horn,” shouted the 
divers.
Again Baltasar waved them to silence.
“I heard the horn myself. That was him all right. 
There’s nobody at sea can blow a horn like that. We ought 
to be getting away from here, and lose no time about it.”
“Old wives’ tales,” said Pedro Zurita. He didn’t like 
the idea of sailing from the pearling ground with all 
those oysters on board, stinking and still not ready for 
opening. But it was like running his head against a stone 
wall, trying to talk the divers into staying. They shouted 
discordantly, flung their arms about and threatened 
to abandon the schooner and walk to Buenos Aires if 
Zurita didn’t weigh anchor.
“Curse you and the ‘sea-devil’,” he said finally. “You 
win. Well weigh anchor at dawn.” And grumbling and 
cursing he went below.
He was no longer sleepy. Lighting the lamp he got 
a cigar going and began pacing up and down his small 
cabin. His thoughts turned to the mysterious creature 
that had been haunting their part of the estuary for 
some time now, striking terror into the fishermen and 
seaside villagers.

Alexander BELYAEV • THE AMPHIBIAN
10
Sailors and fishermen would tell tales about it, 
with many a timid glance over the shoulder, as if afraid 
that the monster might surprise them even as they 
spoke about it.
The creature was believed to have helped some 
people and harmed others.
“It’s the sea-god,” said the older Indians, “him as 
comes out of the ocean once in a thousand years — to 
restore justice on earth.”
The Catholic priests exhorted their superstitious 
Spanish flock to seek salvation in religion, saying that 
the sea-monster was a visitation of the wrath of God 
for their neglect of the Holy Catholic Church.
Rumours spread and at last reached Buenos 
Aires. For weeks the “sea-devil” made headlines in 
the sensation-hungry press. Any unaccounted-for 
loss of schooner or fishing-craft, any theft of nets or 
fish catch were all the “sea-devil’s” doing. But there 
were other stories as well — of big fish mysteriously 
deposited in fishing boats, of men saved from drowning.
At least one of these swore that when he was 
going under for the last time somebody caught him 
from behind and sped him shorewards and onto the 
beach, disappearing behind the surf the very moment 
he struggled to his feet and looked back.