Justice for Sharks QQ 



nothing comes amiss to them, any of them. But to 

 single out the Shark for opprobrium on this head is 

 absurd, as absurd as is the invention of such idiotic 

 stories as the Shark following a ship at sea because on 

 board there is one sick. Much better to recognise in 

 the Shark an evidence of the eternal wisdom of God, 

 Who has here provided a race of large creatures in the 

 sea possessed of an amazing appetite and absolutely 

 indifferent to the quality of the food they eat, except 

 that it must be flesh or fish — living or dead matters 

 nothing. And in the agony of hunger, for agony it 

 must be, they do not always stop to make sure that 

 what they are swallowing is succulent flesh. I have 

 seen a Shark swallow a bag of cinders flung overboard 

 purposely. Consider how great must be the torment 

 of an appetite that can thus drive a carnivore to so 

 bitter and unsatisfying a morsel. 



Now, having stated briefly what can with truth and 

 honesty be said against the Shark, let us consider him 

 a little more closely. And in order to do this it will be 

 necessary, I think, to use a little imagination, yet 

 imagination restrained by fact. 



At the base of that great mountain in the South 

 Atlantic, whose summit is named on the charts Fern- 

 ando do Noronha, there lay side by side in the cool 

 gloom of that depth two ordinary Sharks. Male and 

 female, husband and wife, they had enjoyed each other's 

 society as only monogamous creatures can, and now 

 the time had come that they must part. For the rule 

 of the Shark tribe is solitary hunting, or if crowds 

 gather at a banquet, all ties for the time are merged 

 in the one overmastering desire for food. Whether 

 they would ever meet again troubled them not at all — 

 we are the only creatures of God's great family who are 

 troubled about the future — ^but they felt bitterly the 



