IS^ONSUCH 



erate. Keeping an upright balance was the only- 

 thing to be careful about en route, but at the minute 

 of landing it was necessary to dig in at once. With 

 all my fingers, and my feet in their mobile, rubber- 

 soled sneakers, I grasped every projection possible. 

 In this case I found I could even jam an angle of 

 the helmet against an overhanging corner. All this 

 was to prevent my being swept off the reef by the 

 retreating surge, and to guard against scraping in 

 the opposite direction on razor-sharp corals and still 

 more unpleasant spiny urchins. The one I had 

 stabbed was close by, and the stream of luscious 

 odor-taste pouring forth had already proved a 

 magnet to a school of sergeant majors. Fish are like 

 vultures and when they see an excited mob of abu- 

 defdufs milling around a certain spot, no hint of 

 odor or taste is needed to urge them to hurry to the 

 place. The sequence is much the same as a light in 

 the water at night, or a great jungle tree felled 

 in the tropics — first come the smaller creatures, 

 then the larger, and finally the great carnivores who 

 are attracted not by the lure of bait, or light, or 

 bark, but by the chance of feeding on the mob itself. 

 I sat with rubber sling drawn taut, feet braced 

 against the surge, but body and head giving as 

 much as possible to it. Here is a real under-sea 

 rhythm, not found anywhere else, to which every 

 fish and floating form of life, every loose strand of 

 weed or plume, all with one impulse, swing slowly 

 first in one direction, then all back again. I aimed 

 at fish after fish, and then an unusually colored 



40 



