THE INCREDIBLE SHARKS 



347 



missing it by inches and causing a temporary flurry of loose 

 sand before it flung into a wide arc which, with diminishing 

 speed, carried it to a point midway between the surface and 

 the ocean floor where it hung motionless for at least sixty 

 seconds. I saw it gulp once or twice and watched a silver scale 

 trickle from its jaws. The scale went slowly drifting down 

 through the azure water catching momentary flashes of sun- 

 light as it rocked back and forth before it finally settled on the 

 floor of the ocean. 



The effect of this tiny mote and its slow descent after the 

 rush of action that preceded it was startling. The nearest com- 

 mon happening to which I can link it is the silvery tinkle of 

 tiny fragments of glass falling to the ground after the rending, 

 sickening crash of a bad automobile accident. I vividly remem- 

 ber the same sensation when a car in which I was rijding, and 

 which was driven off the road by a reckless driver in another 

 machine, collided with a telephone pole and snapped it off at 

 its base. Fortunately no one was hurt but the most realistic 

 recollection of the whole affair was not the thunderous boom 

 of the actual contact but the delicate trickling of minute 

 pieces of the windshield and headlights as they slid across 

 the crumpled metal in the comparative quiet that followed. 

 Whenever I hear the tinkle of fine glass I automatically wince. 

 Similarly whenever I think of hammerheads there immediately 

 flashes to mind the silvery scale slowly dropping through the 

 azure water. 



The shark poised in midwater for perhaps Rve minutes and 

 then with a mighty surge of its torso pulsed off into the un- 

 known. The last I saw of its retreating body was a three quar- 

 ter view when it swerved to inspect something beyond my 

 ken. I felt as though I were looking at a creature which did 

 not belong to my world; it seemed a shape that was properly 

 snatched out of the recesses of the past to spend a brief hour 



