Word: guano
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...child) creeps stealthily down the coast. With it come tropical rains and disaster. Floods roar through dry valleys. Buildings not designed for rain leak or collapse. Worst of all, the warm water, which is only 100 feet deep, drives cold-water fish below the surface. Peru's famous guano birds, which feed on the fish, starve by the million, heaping the beaches with their corpses...
...pincers," which he habitually taps against his contact lenses, making a "dull ting." Dr. No's hobby is torture ("I am interested in pain"). Bond survives Dr. No's inventive obstacle course from electric shocks to octopus hugs, buries his tormentor alive under a small mountain of guano, and rescues the girl from a fate as a tasty snack for some giant land crabs...
Since the '30s, prospectors have known that there were untold thousands of tons of one of the finest natural fertilizers packed in the caves, in some places 70 ft. deep. The problem was to get it out. Various companies tried to dragline the guano out of the caves, lower it to the canyon floor, then float it down the river on barges. The Colorado's raging moods queered that plan. Others tried to ferry it out by helicopter and by light planes; one company managed to fly out 400 tons, a ton at a time, before the canyon...
...made any money until two years ago, when Frank E. Ruben, 61, boss of the Toronto-based New Pacific Coal & Oils, Ltd. (mining, timber), got a whiff of the guano. He estimated the deposits held at least 100,000 tons and thought he knew how to go about getting it. Buying out the remaining leases, he went to U.S. Steel Corp.'s Consolidated Western Steel Division, asked it to stretch a huge cable-and-bucket rig from the caves to the canyon's south rim, where the guano could be trucked to market. Specifications: the cable must...
...miles away; some 200 tons of equipment (compressors, hoists, welding machines) was airlifted in pieces and assembled on the canyon floor. Finally, after nine months, the job was finished. Cost to U.S. Steel: $680,000, nearly $230,000 more than its firm bid. When and if all the guano is mined in ten years or so, says Ruben, "we'll simply offer tourists the only tram ride across the greatest hole on earth...