Fish

"The sting-ray was about six feet from wing-tip to wing-tip, and perhaps ten feet long from the blunt wedge of its nose to the end of its deadly tail. It was dark grey with that violet tinge that is so often a danger signal in the underwater world. When it rose from the pale golden sand and swam a little distance it was as if a black towel was being waved through the water."
Hemingway perhaps?
The next line defines it:
"James Bond, his hands along his flanks, and swimming with only a soft trudge of his fins followed the black shadow....."
I had never been fond of Bond novels (except "Goldfinger" which I thought exciting); then I read this short story, "The Hildebrand Rarity" and I was impressed. It's about diving with a harpoon gun.... (can't remember much about it except how stylish it was).
A friend of mine hired such a gun when he was abroad on holiday but he got to be quite unhappy about using it. He told me "you get close to a fish, it doesn't move but looks at you sort of politely, enquiringly; then you shoot it and you feel sorry you did."
He gave it up. But not before he'd killed a rather large squid (one of those squids that get larger every time the story is told). He dragged it onto the beach but didn't know what to do with it until he was approached by a couple of blokes, fishermen types, who offered him a good payment for it if he didn't want it. Well, he didn't know how to cook squid so he sold it. Then he took the gun back to the place he'd hired it from and never shot another fish - or a squid - again.
I know what he meant by the inquisitive, innocent, trusting look of fish in South of France waters. I never used a gun or anything else of a lethal nature but just swam about with them. Until, one day, something stung me: a jelly fish.
Not a pleasant thing to happen. If I'd had a harpoon gun then I'd have...... Well, maybe.