TROPICAL BAPTISM I5 



What a sight it was !' 



But it was what the second man had said that really 

 interested me. 



'Tell me,' I said, Vhat did you do to the blue shark?' 



'Me? Do to it?' He seemed amazed at my question. 

 'Nothing!' 



'Do you mean to say that it attacked you without your 

 having disturbed it or harmed it in any way?' 



'Of course!' 



'How big was it?' 



'About three feet.' 



'Were you working on the sea bed?' 



'Oh no, I was in four span of water pulling in the net.' 



'Ah I Then the shark was in the net ?' 



'I should say it was. Thrashing about like mad!' 



I settled back in my chair. It was the same old story; man 

 takes it out of animals and then protests when these unfor- 

 tunate beings defend themselves in the best way they can. 



'It isn't that I'm not frightened of sharks,' I tried to 

 explain at the third beer. 'I'm as frightened as the devil; 

 but I've come here to find out if sharks really merit all this 

 amount of fear.' 



But a discussion based on air like this one was is much 

 better drowned in beer. Humanity has definite ideas about 

 sharks, crystallized in oral and written tradition, adventure 

 stories, newspaper articles, novels, the testimonies of sailors 

 and fishermen and a hundred treatises on popular science, 

 and sees them as the most uncanny and fantastic creatures on 

 God's earth. Now, however, the legend has had its day. It is 

 quite out of the question that sharks turn upside down when 

 eating, that pilot fishes guide them, that they are extremely 

 aggressive and courageous, that they eat anything and every- 

 thing all the time (including the classical bottles thrown into 



