WITH HELMET AND HOSE TQ 



down for the first time, on a coral bank in Darwin 

 Bay. I made five descents but recall very few 

 details, because at the moment when I was ducking 

 inside the helmet for the second time, I saw, a few 

 yards away, one of the largest grey sharks I have 

 ever seen, a giant of a generous eleven or twelve 

 feet, cutting the water with his great dark fin. My 

 companions did not fail to remind me of my noto- 

 rious scorn of sharks, so with a rather sickly grin 

 I went down. The dominant impression of this 

 first experience was of the disconcertingly narrow 

 field of vision — the oblique panes of glass in the 

 helmet permitting only about sixty degrees. What 

 I had seen at the surface kept my imagination 

 busy with the keenest desire to see what was trans- 

 piring in the remaining three hundred degrees of 

 my visual circle. I am certain that from above I 

 must have looked like some strange sort of owl, 

 whose head continually revolved first in one and 

 then in the opposite direction. 



It is idle to say that I, and I think all of us who 

 went down, did not feel at first exceedingly ner- 

 vous. It was disconcerting, as I have said, not to 

 be able to see directly behind by a quick turn of the 

 head, and until I became accustomed to the nib- 

 bling touch of some little fish who was investigating 

 this strange creature so new to its world, I would 

 often leap up in expectation of seeing some mon- 

 ster of the deep about to attack me. This stage 

 passed and I soon felt perfectly at home. On the 

 very few occasions when some creature seemed 

 tempted to make a tentative hostile approach, it 



