ALMOST ISLAND 



rock-fish drifted out from between my legs and I let 

 go. He was larger and stronger than I thought 

 and with a half dozen tremendous flicks he tore 

 loose. Instead of fleeing, he turned and snapped 

 at the arrow point which still held several 

 scales. 



Smaller fish were easy to hold when once the 

 arrow was well through, and the astonishing thing 

 was that after being shaken off into a pail they 

 recovered, and later in an aquarium swam upright 

 and healed quickly. When an arrow merely grazed 

 the side of a fish, it invariably turned and bit at the 

 weapon and then swam off and rubbed its scaleless 

 patch against coral and reef. A badly wounded fish 

 which escaped, illustrated one of the fundamental 

 Jaws of this underworld — one which holds in all 

 the places and oceans where I have dived. An un- 

 injured fish is comparatively safe, but an injured 

 one is attacked and killed by every carnivorous fish 

 in sight, including the members of its own school. 

 Even the parrots and the surgeons mill excitedly 

 about and seem to deplore the fact that they are 

 vegetarians and can take no part in this summary 

 execution. To us it seems cruel, or a better term 

 perhaps is inhuman, in the real meaning of the 

 word. If our far distant ancestors had not kept the 

 race fit in some such way, perhaps we would not 

 today have the stamina to carry on and yet cherish 

 our weaklings and cripples, wage war with poison 

 gas instead of clubs and too often forget the sheer 

 joy of hard creative work. 



41 



