Shark

“ A large shark is under the counter; he is so gorged with human flesh, that he can scarcely move his tail in the tinged water; and he now hears the sullen plunges of the bodies, as they are launched through the lower-deck port, with perfect indifference. ”

“ Pull on! 'tis the better rest, the shark's jaw than the yielding water."
"But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!"
"They will last long enough! pull on!—But who can tell"—he muttered—"whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on Ahab?—But pull on! Aye, all alive, now—we near him. The helm! take the helm; let me pass,"—and so saying, two of the oarsmen helped him forward to the bows of the still flying boat. ”

“ If we do this, we shall travel not many miles from the shore in summer, wending our way through shrimps and lobsters, gurnards, cod-fish, soles, and turbot, before we may chance to come across a great Blue shark, with his slaty-coloured back and fins, swimming heavily but strongly through the water, and turning sharply from time to time to seize a passing fish, his white belly gleaming like a flash of light as it comes uppermost, and then disappearing again in the dark water. ”

“ First shark that makes a slip is to call the skipper and be sent adrift with one oar and nothing else. And all, my friend, after you had pledged your honor to your mother, your God, yourself, and your friends, to be a true and honorable shark. It isn't the hot sun broiling you and covering you with bursting blisters, and changing the marrow of your bones to melted iron and your blood to hissing lava—it isn't the sun that hurts ”

“ A shark who has once enjoyed the luxury of human flesh is said to haunt the neighborhood where he obtained it. He follows a ship from some instinctive feeling, and has been known to leap into a fisherman's boat, or throw himself against a ship in an effort to reach a sailor who had shown himself over the bulwarks. ”

“ Then such a vicious-looking tail! Oh, you had better keep clear of an angel-fish.
A toad-fish looked like an enormous, swimming toad. Bless me! I caught sight of a shark as I came well out into the ocean. He was more than twenty feet long. Think of that! But they are thirty feet sometimes. His great, fleshy, powerful tail takes him along as he looks from side to side for his prey. I saw his pointed nose and his rows of awful teeth, one over another.
There are sharks that can bite a man in halves. Once in awhile we see a shark in our Mediterranean, but they do not abound there. ”

“ Like the shark, it throws itself on its back when in the act of seizing its prey. The fishermen frequently see it lying motionless, its white belly glittering through the water, a few fathoms from the boat’s side, employed in stripping off every fish from their hooks as the line is drawn over it. ”

“ I look up to see a shark swim slowly round and round, just having seen me, and making his preparations. I have my knife ready, for often have I met this gentleman before. I slip behind the coral tree, and wait; but he is a stupid beast, the shark, and knows not what to do when I come not out. ”

“ I sang out to the two men who were in the boat receiving the oysters as they came up to seize a couple of oars and violently splash the surface of the water with them, in the hope that the sound would drive the brute away—for, after all, the shark, voracious as it is, is a timid creature, easily frightened by any sudden or unaccustomed noise. ”

“ The shark betrays its presence by its black dorsal fin above the surface of the sea. When the fin disappears the danger increases, becomes terrible; the fear of the swimmer in the vicinity of that black, unseen peril overmasters him. ”

“ The fish, if such it was, at length began to grow weary of towing the raft, and allowed himself to be drawn nearer and nearer till his mouth was seen for an instant close to the surface.
“Ah! I know him,” exclaimed old Jefferies. “A shark! a shark! he’s as mischievous a fellow as any that swims, though he will hurt no one who does not put his hand down his mouth.” ”

“ The really hungry shark is a ravening murderer—dangerous as a wounded buffalo, reckless as a mad dog.... I have seen one tear the paddle from the hand of a man beside me and sink its teeth, over and over again in a frenzy, in the bottom of a heavy canoe. How long do you suppose a swimmer would have lived? And it's not only the big sharks that are dangerous. I remember one day when a lot of us were bathing in Penrhyn lagoon. Suddenly one of the boys gave a shout and began to struggle with something in the waist-deep water—clouded with blood by the time I got there. ”

“ This wily and experienced shark, not daring to turn and expose his more vulnerable parts to the formidable sword of his enemy, lashed at him with his heavy tail, as a man uses a flail, working the water into a syllabub. Meanwhile, in honour, I suppose, or in the love of fair play, his seven compatriot sharks stood aloof, lying to with their fins, in no degree interfering in the fray. Frequently I could observe, by the water's eddying in concentric ripples, that the great shark had sunk to the bottom, to seek refuge there, or elude his enemy by beating up the sand ”

“ Possibly the bottom, which was clear, was favourable for his enemy; whose blow, if he succeeds in striking while the shark is descending, is fatal. I think he had struck him, for the blue shark is seldom seen in shoal or discoloured water; yet now he floundered on towards the bottom of the bay, madly lashing the water into foam, and rolling and pitching like a vessel dismasted. For a few minutes his conqueror pursued him, then wheeled round and disappeared; while the shark grounded himself on the sand, where he lay writhing and lashing the shore feebly with his tail. ”

“ In a swirl of lather the head and shoulders came above the surface, the flukes churning the water till it boiled like the wake of a screw steamship. But as soon as these great fins were clear of the surface the shark fell quiet and helpless. ”

“ I was told that accidents seldom happened, for though the shark looked so fierce and formidable, it was, on the whole, a stupid creature, and the awkward position of its mouth on the under surface of the head, rendering it always necessary for it to turn found on its back before it could bite at anything above it, always allowed a tolerably agile person to elude its snap. ”

“ Sharks from five to seven feet long like to sleep in some coral caves beneath the surface of the water in a deep and spacious lagoon- These haunts are known to the natives of the island, and when they go shark hunting, a party of them takes a boat and pulls out to the place where the sharks repose. An expert diver, to whom apparently is given all the honor and glory, and also all the danger, first ascertains that they are "at home" in their caves and sleeping soundly. Then he leaps overboard, dives down to them and nooses the tail of the shark that is nearest to him. ”

“ When attacked by one of these voracious creatures, they wait for the moment when the shark makes its semi-somersault, and opens its cavernous mouth. Then, with an adroitness drawn from practice, and a fearlessness which only great confidence can give, they thrust the estaca, gag-fashion, between the creature’s jaws, leaving it no alternative but to retreat with its jaws wide open, or to close them to its own certain destruction. ”

“ Quite lazily it floated about in the water, now under a stretch of seaweed, all purple and opalescent like ropes of wonderful colors, now through the clear, bright current past the gaping mouth of a shark. But the shark, although always on the watch for something to devour, did not get the little polyp, and soon it came to a submerged rock deep under the waves. This seemed a very good resting place, and there the polyp stayed. ”

“ There were rays of gigantic size, five meters long and with muscles so powerful they could leap above the waves, sharks of various species including a fifteen-foot glaucous shark with sharp triangular teeth and so transparent it was almost invisible amid the waters, brown lantern sharks, prism-shaped humantin sharks armored with protuberant hides, sturgeons resembling their relatives in the Mediterranean, trumpet-snouted pipefish a foot and a half long, yellowish brown with small gray fins and no teeth or tongue, unreeling like slim, supple snakes. ”

“ The shark is ever hungry, and nothing, living or dead, comes amiss to his maw; but owing to the peculiar shape and position of his mouth it is only in rare instances that he is able to catch living prey, as, for instance, when the dog-fish of our coasts, a common species of shark hated by fishermen, gets among the nets enclosing a fine catch of herring or mackerel. ”

“ Quickly the crew had the bell aboard, and before their eyes was a strange sight: a dying shark, in death-travail, lashing its tail on the deck, and a man, faint, weary, nauseated, who dropped beside the victim.
Here is another picture of a man’s adventure among sharks. A cattle ship had been wrecked. A diver went below to overhaul it, and found that a school of sharks had got there before him, attracted by the smell of the feast they nosed about after. ”

“ A shark was seen to make many efforts to reach the body, and it finally succeeded in seizing it, member by member, undisturbed by the cries of the horror-stricken crew assembled on deck to witness the strange spectacle. In order that an animal so large and heavy should be able to throw itself to this height, the muscles of the tail and posterior parts of the body must have an astonishing power. ”

“ They then peer into the water, and when one of the fishermen sees a shark lazily stretching itself on the sand that lies under the overhanging rocks, he lets himself very quietly into the sea, dives down with the rope in his hand, slips the noose over the shark’s tail, and rises to the surface. As soon as he gets into the boat, the men drag the shark out of his retreat, and haul away until the creature’s tail is raised out of the sea, when it becomes nearly helpless. A sudden jerk brings it into the canoe, where it is instantly killed. ”

“ Still more remarkable than anything about the shark itself is the presence of the two pilot-fish that almost invariably flank its head on either side. These interesting creatures instantly swim towards anything that is thrown on the water, swim round it, and then return to their patron; if it be a bottle, or any other inedible object, all three then remain aloof, but if fit to eat, the shark immediately makes for it. ”

“ Of the many different varieties of sharks, there are but two that will attack a man in the water. These are the blue shark, and the ground, or shovel-nosed shark. No more danger need be apprehended from the common brown shark than from a porpoise. We have often seen a Kanaka jump overboard in a perfectly calm day, and swim after them with a sheath-knife, endeavoring to stab them, but Johnny Shark would keep out of his reach. And whenever we had a whale alongside, the sharks would be around in great numbers, and yet never touch the boat-steerer, who was overboard on the whale. ”

“ The shark was of the description found in the North Seas, which is called by the sailors the blind shark. I now perfectly understood that he had been caught and spritsail yarded, as the seamen term it, and then turned adrift for their diversion. The buoyancy of the spar prevents the animal from sinking down under the water, and this punishment of their dreaded enemy is a very favourite amusement of sailors. ”

“ The shark is a creature gifted with great strength, a savage temper, dogged perseverance, and exceptional power of jaw. The lion and tiger may mangle, the crocodile may lacerate, the bulldog may hold fast—the shark alone of living creatures possesses the power of cleanly nipping off a human limb at a bite. ”

“ A shark, Squalus carcharias, Linn., taken this morning, and with it two pilot fish. I went out in the boat and took several blubbers. The pilot fish, Gasterosteus ductor, Linn., is certainly as beautiful a fish as can be imagined; it is of a light blue, with cross streaks of darker colour. It is wonderful to see them about a shark, swimming round it without expressing the least signs of fear ”

“ The common tropic bird is the shrine of one of their gods, and the shark of another; and should the one fly over their heads, or the other swim past, those who wear turbans would doff them, and all utter some word of respect. A shark lying athwart their course is an omen which fills them with fear. A basket of bitter oranges on board a vessel is believed to diminish her speed. On one sort of canoe it is “tapu” (sacrilege) to eat food in the hold; on another in the house on deck; on another on the platform near the house. ”

“ A shark is a large thing—twenty, thirty, or forty feet long sometimes—and many voracious fish that might prefer to keep away from its head, might be bold enough, perhaps, to approach its tail or the after part of its body. The remora, apparently, is not in the habit of going inside the shark’s mouth, as does the pilot-fish—so it may think the next safest thing to that is to keep as near it as it can, on the outside. ”

“ Every now and then some big fellow would leap right out, to come down again with a heavy splash, and send a whole shoal of tiny fish, invisible to us before, flying out of the water to avoid their enemy, the river shark. ”

“ In seeking to gratify its taste it lies upon the water as if dead. The sea-birds, taken by the trick, settle down upon what they think is a carcass out of which they can make a feast. When a sufficient number of them to give him a good taste have gathered upon his belly, Master Shark begins to sink his body slowly into the water, commencing with his tail, so as to drive his victims up to his head, and within reach of his capacious mouth. ”