298 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



should step on a sting-ray. When a swim was 

 proposed as our boat swung at anchor in mid- 

 channel, under the burning midday sun, Captain 

 Sprinkle warned us against it because he had 

 just seen a large shark. He said that sharks 

 rarely attacked men, but that he had known of 

 two instances of their doing so in Mississippi 

 Sound, one ending fatally. In this case the man 

 was loading a sand schooner. He was standing 

 on a scaffolding, the water half-way up his 

 thighs, and the shark seized him and carried 

 him into deep water. Boats went to his as- 

 sistance at once, scaring off the shark; but the 

 man's leg had been bitten nearly in two; he 

 sank, and was dead when he was finally found. 

 The following two days we continued our 

 cruise. We steamed across vast reaches of 

 open Gulf, the water changing from blue to 

 yellow as it shoaled. Now and then we sighted 

 or passed low islands of bare sand and scrub. 

 The sky was sapphire, the sun splendid and 

 pitiless, the heat sweltering. We came across 

 only too plain evidence of the disasters always 

 hanging over the wilderness folk. A fortnight 

 previously a high tide and a heavy blow had 

 occurred coincidentally. On the islands where 

 the royal terns especially loved to nest the high 

 water spelled destruction. The terns nest close 



