DISSEI, BROWN ISLAND 63 



Completely beside myself I rose to the surface reeling, more 

 dead than alive. Somehow the tail of the bream was still in 

 my hand. While still rising, exhausted and feeling like a cat 

 at sea, I saw the tail of the shark disappear like a flash into 

 the blue. Of the two of us, he in the end had had the worst 

 fright. 



In the meantime the boat had drawn closer. My com- 

 panions, who were all aboard, looked at me stupefied. What 

 the devil had I been doing? I told them in two words, 

 handed them the bream, climbed on board, and said not 

 another word. I was in a rather emotional state and knew 

 that if I tried to tell them straight away about what had 

 happened, I would not be able to do much more than stutter. 

 It was only then that I began to realize that I had lived 

 through a quarter of an hour that was slightly out of the 

 ordinary. 



Dissei, strange and beautiful island ... I wrote in my diary 

 * . . . We've been fishing the whole time on the eastern 

 barrier. Gigi found a five-foot black-fin on the sea bed. He 

 approached and shot at it, crossing it on the barrier's edge. 

 The shark went mad, got entangled in the corals and split 

 the cord.' The events recorded in these few lines were for 

 Gigi an entire drama, the conclusion of which made him all 

 but weep. I can remember his face and how he told the story 

 back in the boat. How clever he had been to get it to follow 

 him on to the shelf into the shallow water! And the masterly 

 way in which he had put it off its guard, cornered it and 

 plunged the steel arrow into its side . . . and then, alas, the 

 shark had begun its saraband. It had thrashed a hundred 

 corals to pieces with its rail, become embroiled in them with 

 the nylon cord, broken this too and spun away to die as food 



