igO DAHLAK 



watching us only with one eye and swimming incredibly 

 slowly as if carried along by the current or by a mysterious 

 levitation. The small ones up to five feet long were not so 

 intimidating, probably because they had no clear idea of 

 what they wanted to do and travelled along like wriggling 

 serpents poking their snouts to left and right. But the big 

 ones could have been torpedoes or dirigibles. When one of 

 them passed slowly and silently by I was always left with a 

 feeling that perhaps after all it had been a hallucination. I 

 suspected marine ghosts every time. 



On one occasion I decided to go down to the foundations 

 of the wall. I went under vertically after taking a long breath. 

 My first visit lasted almost two minutes. As I went down the 

 madrepore gradually changed to yellow, then became darker 

 still until the indigo of the depths absorbed and dominated 

 every colour. I came to the sandy bottom and to the last 

 pieces of coral that had fallen from the wall at about sixty 

 feet under. I began to search and look around. A tribe of big, 

 mysterious fish moved slowly in the shadows, a little dis- 

 turbed. A fine, big pampano came across me and flew off in 

 fear. A grey shark hung around at a distance and then made 

 off . . . but to the right of me, I saw two immense shapes 

 rise up from the bottom and turn round and round. I swam 

 up to them and found myself a spectator at the courting of 

 two rays. Neither of them could have weighed less than a 

 hundredweight. It seemed odd to be down there in the dark, 

 with sixty feet of water above me, witnessing the ceremony 

 of the declaration of love of two monsters. I was surprised to 

 find them so refined and graceful and having such undulating 

 rhythmic movements. 



I went down to the bottom a hundred and one times, with 

 and without the breathing apparatus. I used to hold on to 

 a piece of rock on the sandy floor of the second lower shelf, 



