312 The Barracouta 



to tell me anecdotes about the Barracouta. I regret 

 exceedingly that I am unable to reproduce them here 

 in detail. I can only say that, if true, and the narrator 

 evidently believed them to be so, they stamped the 

 Barracouta with a malignancy of character in its 

 relations to man compared with which that of the shark 

 is personified amiability. It must suffice to say that, 

 according to cook, the vicinity of a Barracouta to 

 a swimmer meant death, death by lingering torture, 

 since the terrible fish only took one bite, but that a 

 diabolically efficient one. No wonder, believing what 

 they did, that the negroes should have called the 

 Barracouta the ' devil-fish,' one among the many 

 denizens of the deep sea to which this grisly name 

 has been given. 



A few days later I had an opportunity of seeing 

 how firm a hold this belief had upon the darkies. 

 By accident a pair of can-hooks had been dropped 

 overboard, and although the water was forty feet 

 deep, such was its transparency that they could plainly 

 be seen resting upon the smooth white sand. There 

 were several sharks prowling around as usual, but the 

 offer of a shilling to whoever would dive for those 

 can-hooks was quite sufficient to bring forward in- 

 stantly half-a-dozen eager candidates, who cared 

 no more for the presence of a shark than they did for a 

 sprat. One by one they went overboard, making first 

 a bit of a splashing to keep the sharks at a respectful 

 distance, and then swimming down to the bottom. 



But the can-hooks proved too heavy to lift to the 

 surface, although several divers tried, and at last a man 

 was going down with a hook on the hand lead-line to 

 attach to the chain of the can-hooks when suddenly a 

 cry of ' Couter,' ' Couter ' was raised. There were at the 

 time eight negroes in the water gambolling about and 



