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The Black Pearl
by
Scott O’Dell
Everyone who lives in our town of La Paz, or along the far coasts or among
the high mountains of Baja California, has heard of the Manta Diablo. There
are many who live in the great world outside who heave heard of him also,
I am told. But of these thousands only two have really seen him. And of the
two, only one is alive – I, Ramón Salazar.
There are many people in the town of La Paz and in Baja California who say
they have seen the Manta Diablo. Old men around the fires at night tell their
grandsons of the meetings they have had with him. Mothers seek to frighten
bad children by threatening to c all from the deeps of the sea this fearsome
giant.
I am now sixteen, but when I was younger and did things I
should not have done, my own mother said to me solemnly, “Ramón,
if you do this thing again I shall speak a word to the Manta Diablo.”
She told me that he was larger than the largest ship in the harbor of La Paz.
His eyes were the color of ambergris and shaped like a sickle moon and there
were seven of them. He had seven rows of teeth in his mouth, each tooth as
long as my father’s Toledo knife. With these teeth he would snap my
bones like sticks.
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