Later, arriving in Cape Infanta, I learnt that digital fuel guages have a habit of failing over corrugated dirt roads. I was out of fuel and needed help to get back after my dive. Parked above Ronde Klip, where many years ago I spent a few days chasing a swell to the mythical wave that breaks there, I set out a lookin'.
In search of a local I meat a wandering young dude smoking a thin, pungent, hand rolled cigarette on the beach. "Ja bru, no worries. I'll sort you out with some go-juice. Just come over to my caravan around the bend after you go take a look at the Great White on the rocks." - he said exhaling a giant plume of interstellar-mind-vapour with a shuddering gag reflex.
I walked the couple hundred meters to a rock shelf I knew well and there it lay. Washed up at high tide but decapitated. Two figures stood guard from a grassy rise above with the shark's head resting beside them and with a hook in the corner of it's mouth. From a distance, grinding disks cutting through bricks and hammers pounding steel scored their presence.
After introductions the two conservationists speculated that fishermen at Skipskop had caught and played the shark to death, then cut the line for the body to drift on the current around the point and tide carried it up the bay. Construction workers near by noticed it at dawn and cut the head off to sell the jaws on the black market. They granted me the privilege to inspect the head at their feet and the carcass below. "Just no photos." - they said.
The razor sharp teeth made a high pitched ring when plucking at them and I had to be careful not to cut my fingers. They were overlapping in rows of acute triangles rolled backed from the front of the jaw and into the pallet inside the mouth gradually decreasing in size. The ampulae of Lorenzini on it's snout where hollow at about 1 - 1.5 or maybe even 2mm in diameter with the jelly like substance inside sunken to a depth of about 10-20mm. At touch, the eyes rolled in their sockets like any other fish but I can not imagine pressing one's thumbs in them would deter this animal from attack. The rims of the eye sockets were as tough as the edge on a steel tumbler.
Shifting the head on it's side I could see a cross section of it's inner workings. I ran my fingers through the gill rakers. A cluster, hundreds-worth of 1 inch long and 3-4mm in diameter, phallic protrusions in 5 rows a side, lay neatly awaiting to extract oxygen. The gullet felt like the only vulnerable spot on this overwhelmingly rigid beast.
Descending the rise I investigated the carcass. Just absolute evolutionary, apex dominance lay there (albeit headless). It turned out to be female by lack of claspers. The peduncle was wider than it was tall. The trailing edges of the dorsal-, pectotal- and tail fin seemed to have a condensed fibrous texture. Tightly stacked like hair but making up solid blades. The skin and it's resistance seemed concrete. Nowhere on this animal was softer bar the gullet. Pure in it's form. Evidently unique. Whatever this thing decided to consume - it did.
Finding the dude's caravan and knocking respectfully, he opened the door shrouded in a massive extraterrestrial-brain-cloud. A domesticated black crow followed him everywhere while they exchanged compliments that seemingly wafted on clouds of pungent bliss. "Nah, hop in my bakkie real quick, bru. There's a pump in Malgas by the hotel. We'll take this outboard tank and hook you up with some go-juice. Don't stress my bru."
Cleaning the 5 litre tank of rust flakes, I bode farewell to the crow and off we went. Along the drive to Malgas, the dude had many stories to tell accompanied by relentlessly vehement oppinions about scattered topics.
At Malgas' daylight underworld, deep colloquialisms were strung together toward a common result, appreciated for it's unique contribution to an experience but ultimately left behind as a secondary memory. We had Petrol and we weren't abducted by aliens in our pursuit.
We fueled my car up once we got back and parted ways with thanks. I had unfinished business to attend. So I scoped the dive I had planned from hill above Ronde Klip and committed. Slightly divided in conviction, I swam out past the Great White. Later, over a reef, my mask fogged up and I swam to a nearby pinnacle where I could stand upright, waist deep, above the surface. While spitting on the lense and rubbing it a Humpback whale breached. For the rest of the dive ghostly whoons of whale-song emanating from the great blue beyond reverberated deep within every vesicle of my body.
After beaching I had absolutely nothing to show for the day. Driving back I nodded off acouple of times behind the wheel and opted to pull over for 40 winks under a roadside Bluegum. Dreaming of the big one that got away, I thought: "At least I got a pheasant for tonight's meal."
...and that's how I killed a game bird with a speargun.
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