everything which comes its way, and which will follow a man in the water with dogged determination, foreign to the nervous, suspicious shark.  Recently a vigorous young black boy was attacked by a groper while diving for beche-de-mer.  The fish took the boy’s head into its capacious mouth, mauling him severely about the head and shoulders, and but for his valiant and determined struggles would doubtless have succeeded in killing him.

Such an incident as the following does not convince blacks that the sharks of the Barrier Reef are dangerous.  The captain of a beche-de-mer cutter was paddling in a dinghy along the edge of a detached reef not many miles from Dunk Island, while several of his boys were swimming and diving.  Suddenly one of them was seized and so terribly mutilated that he died in a few minutes.  Although the captain was within 8 or 10 feet of the boy, and three of his mates not more than a few yards off, though all were wearing swimming goggles which enable them when diving to distinguish objects at a considerable range, though the sea was calm and clear and the water barely 10 feet deep, no one saw a shark or any other fish capable of inflicting such injuries as had caused the death of “Jimmy,” nor was there any disturbance of the surface of the water.  Years before a countryman of the unfortunate “Jimmy” was mauled by a small shark, but got away, though crippled for life.  By some quaint process of reasoning the companions of the boy who was killed connected his death with the attack upon the other, the scene of which was 200 miles distant, and became convinced that he had been the victim of another kind altogether “—­a sort of mysterious marine debil-debil,” not known to entire satisfaction by the best-informed black boy, and quite beyond the comprehension of the dull-witted white man.  Having thus conclusively to their minds set at naught the theory that a shark was responsible, it was absolutely unreasonable to fear sharks generally.  Why should they blame a shark when it was established beyond doubt that nothing but a “debil-debil” could have killed “Jimmy”?  Their opinion was founded on this invincible array of logic:  If a shark had killed “Jimmy,” it must have been seen.  Nothing was seen, therefore it must have been a “debil-debil.”  And the incident was accepted as a further and most emphatic proof of the contention that sharks do not “fight” live black boys.  The single instance at Princess Charlotte Bay was an exception.

Our tame sharks seem to have no fear of animals larger even than man.  A shallow stretch of water half a mile broad separates the islets of Mung-un-gnackum and Kumboola from Dunk Island.  At low-water spring-tides two connecting bands are exposed—­a sand-bank and a broad, flat coral reef, between which is a lagoon, in which the water may be 6 or 7 feet deep.  The horses of the estate are in the habit of making excursions to Kumboola, the desire for change being manifested so strongly that occasionally they will swim across