Page:The Aborigines of Australia (1988).djvu/62

Rh he be not sufficiently dexterous or skilful he receives them in his body, and perhaps falls a victim to the wounds which they inflict. Very often the offender escapes altogether unhurt, owing to his expert management of the shield. A practice bearing some analogy to this is said to prevail in some countries of the East, where criminals are sentenced to swim across a neck of the sea known to abound in sharks, to whose ravenous propensities they are thus almost to a certainty sacrificed.