CHAPTER XVI 



The Incredible Sharks 



Sharks are beautiful in much the same sense that tigers or dive 

 bombers are beautiful. They may be savage, cruel, blood- 

 thirsty and sadistic beasts, or like the bombers, precise engines 

 of destruction, but the fact remains that a free, ocean-living 

 shark is perfection of line, the ultimate of grace. Streamlining 

 is not new; it is only a modern application of an art developed 

 by the sharks long ages before man was ever dreamed of, let 

 alone created. There are, of course, a few sharks that have 

 strayed from the elegant symmetry of their race. The hammer- 

 heads and the bonnet-sharks are among these variants, but, by 

 and large, the family of sharks has upheld the first rule of its 

 form— harmonious proportion. 



A shark strung up on a fishing line or lying dead on the deck 

 of a ship is not lovely. Like any other dead thing it is so much 

 twisted flesh and crumpled tissue. Only life endows them 

 with their most conspicuous characteristic. I have questioned 

 numerous individuals about sharks, fishermen and naturalists, 

 and find that very few seem to recognize the fact of their grace. 

 Perhaps this is because only a mere handful of people have 

 seen sharks in their natural environment, and on the same foot- 

 ing. With even these, some of them, the legendary fear, the 

 accumulated distrust augmented by a large literature of shark 

 stories has made it difficult to recognize beauty. Similarly, 

 only one person in ten thousand can see beauty in a serpent 

 although it unquestionably exists. Also the man who is about 

 to have explosives dropped on his head by a Stuka is hardly 

 in a position or mood to think of the airplane's design. Only 



328 



