10 ALBACORA 



black submarines, were rising from below, devouring 

 thousands of anchovies with tremendous swallows. It was 

 awesome. "Talk about no place to hide," I said, as 

 much to myself as to anyone else. But Lou was close 

 enough to have heard me. 



"Call this rough?" he wanted to know. "It's just the 

 law of survival. Genie." Then he was off, shouting at 

 Doty, "Take this, man. Get it on film." 



To a scientist or to a bomber pilot, it might have 

 been interesting to watch the different birds at work; 

 but watching only made me want to shudder. The laws 

 of nature are not tempered by mercy. 



From way up, big albatrosses were diving like rock- 

 ets, their six-foot wings spread wide to guide them 

 down. Pelicans were peeling off from orderly, almost 

 formal, V-formations. Cormorants — guani birds, the 

 people of Iquique call them — were floating and plung- 

 ing for their fish like surface divers. Ballerina birds 

 pranced across the sea on tiptoe, scarcely scarring the 

 surface in their dainty search for food. The fish were 

 jumping ten or twenty times their own length in frantic 

 efforts to escape, but all around the Explorer birds 

 were rising from the sea with wriggling fish clutched 

 securely in their talons. As I thought of what must have 

 been going on below the surface, I felt sorry for the 

 little anchovies. Even as I did, I knew that the feeling 

 was unwarranted. I am certain that whenever anchovies 



