f
the harbour they have frequently taken men down, while inside they are
considered harmless. Why they should thus change their dispositions in
so short a distance it is difficult to say, but that they do not make a
habit of attacking bathers in the bay I am certain, as I was in the
water morning and evening, and frequently swam out a considerable
distance from the shore--thus offering a good bite to a shark. I
believe the reason to be, that inside the bay there are enormous shoals
of small fish, so that a shark could feast for months on them and
scarcely show that he had diminished their numbers. He does not,
therefore, suffer from an unsatisfied appetite so much as his
unfortunate brethren, who may not have such comfortable snug quarters,
or be able to find their way to them when pressed by hunger.

I never tried a fly in the bay, but am convinced it would be taken very
well. There is a fish called a "springer" that makes tremendous leaps
out of the water after insects, and would give capital sport. These
fish are very cunning and not to be caught like common fish with a
simple hook and line; they will come up and look at the bait, swim round
it in all directions, but will not even nibble. If you throw a piece of
the same substance as your bait overboard, twenty of them make a rush at
once to seize it, then have a sniff at your hooked bit, give a kind of
chaffing whisk of their tails, and then sail away. These fellows made
me very angry; I tried the thinnest lines, but it was no go, the water
being so clear; but at last I devised a plan for circumventing them.
Having by great practice acquired the art of throwing the assagy, I
procured one that had a small barbed end, that the Kaffirs used for
fish. I put a piece of lead round the part where the iron joined the
wood, and made a piece of string fast to the spear, harpoon fashion.
Getting the boat into that part of the bay frequented by these artful
fish, I made all ready for a lunge, and told the Kaffir to throw out
some little chopped pieces of meat. A dozen springers rose after them
at once, close to the boat, and not more than a few feet under water.
Allowing for the refraction of the water, the spear was thrown down with
great force; it disappeared, but soon came up again near the top of the
water, the end violently agitated. A gentle, but steady haul on the
line, brought a struggling springer to the boatside, where my Kaffir,
slipping his hand in his gil