146 Man and Shark 



His power is believed to be hereditary; nor is it supposed that the value of 

 his incantations is at all dependent upon the religious faith professed by the 

 operator, for the present head of the family happens to be a Roman Catholic. 

 At the time of our visit, this mysterious functionary was ill and unable to attend. 

 But he sent an accredited substitute, who assured me that, although he himself 

 was ignorant of the grand and mystic secret, the mere fact of his presence, as 

 a representative of the higher authority, would be recognized and respected by 

 the sharks. 



Shark superstitions and shark tales followed in the wake of the sailing 

 ships that touched the exotic isles and strange lands where the shark was 

 a god or an instrument of the gods. And civilized men themselves often 

 used this deity for their own ends. When the British maintained prison 

 colonies on Tasmania, in the early nineteenth century, fierce dogs and 

 armed guards patrolled the prison encampments. But hardy prisoners 

 were managing to escape from one of the settlements, located at the 

 end of a narrow peninsula. The captives slipped into the sea, swam past 

 the patrolled area, then waded ashore and crept through the under- 

 growth to eventual freedom. The governor of the colony ordered that 

 garbage be dumped every day in the waters along the peninsula. Lured 

 by the daily promise of free meals, sharks began congregating in the 

 waters of the escape route. After a few screams in the night, and after 

 the prisoners learned about their hungry new watchers, the escape at- 

 tempts stopped. Sharks were a similar menace to prisoners attempting to 

 escape on frail floats from Devil's Island in the tropical Atlantic off 

 French Guiana. 



Even today, on lie Royale, a prison island next to Devil's Island, 

 one can see the moldering cofHn in which the bodies of prisoners con- 

 demned for killing fellow convicts or guards were placed after they were 

 guillotined. Only one coffin was needed, for the executed men were not 

 buried in the earth. The coffin was loaded aboard a boat which guards 

 rowed a short way off land. The body was there consigned, not to the 

 sea, but to the sharks that swarmed in the blood-stained waters. 



How many dead or dying slaves were thrown to the sharks will 

 never be known. Whispered tales of these evil deeds inspired this anony- 

 mous poem in The Book of Fishes, published in London in 1835: 



. . . here dwells the direful Shark, lured by the scent 

 Of reeking crowds, of rank disease and death. 

 Behold! he rushing cuts the briny flood, 

 Swift as the gale can bear the ship along; 

 And from the partners of that cruel trade 

 Which spoils unhappy Guinea of her sons, 

 Demands his share of prey . . . 



