the barracuda. ‘Mean fish,’ he called them, fearless since they knew no enemy except disease, capable of fifty miles an hour over short distances, and with the worst battery of teeth of any fish in the sea. One day they shot a ten-pounder that had been hanging round them, melting into the grey distances and then reappearing, silent, motionless in the upper water, its angry tiger’s eyes glaring at them so close that they could see its gills working softly and the teeth glinting like a wolf’s along its cruel underslung jaw.
