The hunt for red gold: on Central America's Mosquito Coast, young men plunge into the abyss with defective equipment to capture dwindling stores of lobster. A tale of U.S. appetites, human misery, and one stubborn American's crusade to bring salvation

if Joseph Conrad had witnessed the sight he might have set The Heart of Darkness in Central America rather than Central Africa. Scores of Miskito Indians, lobster divers--buzos de langostas--thronged against the 10-foot-high iron gate at the paw of the pier at Puerto Cabezas, a Nicaraguan fishing town 60 miles southern of the Honduras border. Ratty bedrolls slung across their backs, many half-drunk or stoned, the buzo pushed ahead in the late afternoon sunlight, hoisting yard-long metal lobster-hunting spears called barillas above their heads like the weapons of an attacking medieval force. The descendants of indigenous tribes and escaped African