SLUMBERERS OF THE SURGE 301 



humans in all their more important habits and 

 concerns of life. 



Looking over my finny subjects in general I 

 found they were divided into distinct gens or 

 castes, and these in turn separated more or less 

 naturally into guilds and professions. From my 

 seat at one end of the mushroom city I could pick 

 them out — sometimes several at a glance. Over 

 the coral, above its mounds and branches and laby- 

 rinths, there floated the castes of Free Nomads 

 and Grazers. Shall I call them figuratively the 

 Zeppelins and the airplanes of the sea, or, with 

 rather more exactness of applicability, the eagles 

 and vultures, the parrots and woodpeckers? Or, 

 best of all, let us credit them exactly for what they 

 are. 



As Nomads I should consider those fish people 

 who usually hunt singly, but sometimes in small 

 packs, who have no homes, no coral haunts or rocky 

 retreats, but who live, feed, fight, mate, sleep and 

 die in mid-water. The sharks are these, but not 

 the rays and skates, which belong to the same 

 natural order, but which have spread into various 

 directions and appropriated an interesting and 

 profitable field for themselves. Indeed, in the case 

 of the sharks, what has not been usurped by them 

 has been given them as endowment by legend and 

 fancy. We humans adore to build up a scarecrow 

 of straw and paper around things admirable in 

 themselves, inflate it with hot air, then look at it, 

 scream, and run terrified away. Cries of Snake! 

 Evolution! Shark! are sufficient to throw certain 



