DAHLAK KEBIR, DESERT IN THE SEA 73 



retreat they decided to stay and watch the scene, and 

 propped themselves up against a large rock almost level with 

 the surface. 



The sharks, all of them black-fins between four and six 

 feet long, took no notice whatsoever of our friends. They 

 rushed madly round and round the area of sand raised by the 

 bomb, hurling themselves on the dead fish on the bottom and 

 those floating moribund in half-depth. The spectacle lasted a 

 good ten minutes, then, finding they had no more prey, the 

 black-fins threw themselves in a heap on the one or two 

 remaining gaterin-fish that were emerging half-dead from 

 their holes. Bruno and Giorgio advanced determinedly and 

 entered the tumult, Bruno with his gun ready, Giorgio taking 

 photographs. Soon a shark gained courage, did a large circle 

 and came up alongside Bruno. Bruno stretched out his arm, 

 pressed the trigger, and speared it immediately behind the 

 gills. His gun had only the short cord used for the capture of 

 groupers and he doubted if this would hold, but the shark did 

 one extremely violent tug and Bruno found he was still 

 holding the beast. Bewildered and frightened now, it pulled 

 feebly at the three yards of cord, trying to dislodge the dogged 

 Bruno. With Giorgio' s arrival it finally lost the game. The 

 two of them were able to hold it till Masino Manunza 

 arrived with the boat. Bruno jumped in and began to hoist 

 in his catch, but the shark, with the oddest movements for a 

 non-rock fish, hooked itself under the keel with its tail. 

 Giorgio, still in the water, tried without success to unhitch it. 

 Finally they fixed a hook into its mouth and pulled it up. The 

 shark bit the air in its last spasms. 



On board the Formica later we discovered that this shark 

 was a female on the point of giving birth. In her bowels she 

 carried four perfectly formed foetus, each a foot and a half 

 long. We rehgiously conserved them all in a zinc case. 



