I was good at spearfishing when I met Jacques. I used to swim out to the reef with my net fish bag and speargun, and let the current carry me to the ferry channel. Often I forgot about time. It was another world, a thriving under-water jungle of vivid color. 

I was hanging around one of the hotels in town because four sisters ran the place. Jacques was staying there, and we started talking about spearfishing and decided to swim out together. 

An hour later we met on the beach. He was putting on a wet suit. I tried not to laugh and convinced him it wasn't needed. I felt embarrassed because all his equipment was so shiny and new, from the knife strapped to his leg to the high-dollar watch and mask. But I ignored it and walked into the water.

Spearfishing is like combat. You think you know the person beside you, but until a bull shark swims past or a person is surrounded by a school of barracuda, you don't know if you can depend on your partner. The sight of a shark sends terror through young and old. Some people tear off their masks and scream. Others want to attack the predator when a simple poke to its side is enough to send the carnivore on its way. And that’s the way it was with Jacques. He was untested. 

We had been on the reef for about an hour, drifting along, climbing into lobster caves, shooting one here and there, when I noticed he wasn't around.

The reef is only about a meter deep. I could see him standing twenty feet away. I swam over and raised my head, pulling up my mask. 

The look on his face scared me. Something was wrong. 

"What's going on?" When he didn’t respond I followed his gaze.

It was low tide. In the distance coral heads were poking out of the water, and the current rushing past created the illusion of movement. 

And then Jacques said the forbidden word: “Shark.”

"No, it's coral." I explained about low tide, but he wasn't having it. His face became a horrible thing to look at. 

I was staring where he was staring, thinking maybe he was seeing something I wasn't. Then, to my surprise, he climbed up the coral as though to save himself from a rabid dog. His knees and elbows bled. 

“Dude, what the hell are you doing? There’s nothing there.”

“It’s sharks.” He jerked his head right and left and panted.

That was it. I’d had enough. I pulled on my mask and, slow and easy, swam toward shore. 

Anyone who spearfishes knows that when you're under water you move in a certain way. Quick, thrashing movements make you look like a wounded fish, and that attracts predators.  

I was swimming along, lying on the surface, speargun in one hand, bag of fish in the other, and moving my fins with slow, steady movements. I made it a hundred yards before I heard splashing. 

I stopped and set the bands of my speargun to fire. I’d never heard anything like that sound near the reef. Whatever it was, if it came for me I was going to make it bleed. I pulled my legs up close and hung in the water, waiting. 

Jacques came out of nowhere and swam by, arms and legs swinging like mad, as though trying to break a swimming record. His speargun and knife were gone. He was fleeing the sharks of his imagination. 

I laughed into my mask, disengaged the bands of my speargun, and continued my easy glide over the surface, heading toward land. 

When I got to the beach he was gone.

I pictured him at the hotel, telling one of the sisters how he swam faster than a bunch of sharks. That made me laugh. As I carried my bag of fish along the beach, brushing strands of hair from my eyes, I thought of Jacques, back in France, telling his children about his Caribbean adventure. 

That’s why tourists pay me. They want a memory, an adventure. Jacques embellished his adventure a bit, but it was his to do with as he liked. Who was I to shoot down his story?