90 IN THE LAND OF THE BORA. 



attribute their visits to trie existence of the Suez 

 Canal, which seems to me more than doubtful. 

 Nearly a score of years ago I saw a couple of large 

 white sharks in Gibraltar Bay; and, unless my 

 memory deceives me, Marryatt, always accurate 

 in sea matters, describes men being taken by 

 sharks in the Mediterranean nearly a century 

 before the canal was opened. Be this as it may, 

 they are to be seen at intervals in the Adriatic 

 now, and it is that sort of fact a bather doesn't 

 forget. One very rough day I had swum out to 

 take a header off a stage some seventy yards from 

 shore. I was swimming back — slowly because it 

 was hard work getting through the rollers — when 

 I happened to glance over my shoulder, and there, 

 some little way back, was the well-known tri- 

 angular fin. To judge from my feelings I must 

 have turned green, and I put some record work 

 into the next few yards. Presently I had another 

 look back for the fin, for of course a shark doesn't 

 mean business till that disappears. This time, 

 however, I must have been on the crest and not 

 in the hollow of a wave, for my shark-fin had 

 turned into the tip of a dark-coloured lateen sail, 

 and as I slid into the trough of the sea I saw 

 exactly what I had seen before, but this time with 

 very different feelings. 



Through the pass run two roads, one on each 

 bank, and both more or less overhung by the cliffs 



