INCIDENT RELATED BY SCORESBY. 87 against them with such tremendous fury, that these four noble vessels, which had braved for years the tempests of the Polar seas, were in a quarter of an hour shattered into fragments. The scene was awful the grinding noise of the ice tearing open their sides, and the masts breaking off and falling in every direction, were added to the cries of two hundred sailors, leaping upon the frozen surface with only such portions of their clothes as they could snatch in a single instant. The "Rattler" is said to have become the most complete wreck ever known. She was literally turned inside out, and her stem and stern carried to the distance of a gun-shot from each other; and the "Achilles" had her sides pressed together, her stern thrust out, and her decks and beams broken into innumerable fragments. Scoresby, in his journal, mentions a narrow escape which he had while pursuing a wounded whale through the ice, equipped with a pair of ice-shoes (consisting simply of pieces of deal, six feet long, attached by the middle to the foot), his own invention for walking over loose ice. "I followed the whale on its second appearance, carrying with me a harpoon, and dragging a large quantity of line after me, until I fastened the harpoon by sticking it through the ice. Then returning for a lance, I again attacked the whale, following it as it retreated, and in a short time killed it. On one occasion, when I was waiting for its return to the surface, it happened to rise directly under my feet, so as to break the ice all around me, and lifted me up on its crown. As I must have inevitably followed it in its descent, had I retained my position, I slipped my feet out of the ice-shoes, and, at all risks, ran off to one side. Fortunately, the ice at that spot consisted of two or three folds, and supported my weight until I recovered my shoes." A Dutch harpooner happened to get too near a monstrous whale, which struck him such a violent blow with its tail that the poor fellow was some time before he could regain his breath. The men of another boat harassed the animal in their turn, and at length the boat was upset. All saved themselves with difficulty by swimming, and hiding their heads under the water as long as 88 RISKS ATTENDING "CUTTING UP" WHALES. they could. The cold was intense, and they were picked up all trembling; their hair was frozen, and they had a cap of ice on their heads. The greatest danger in such a case is sleep, which is the twin brother of death. They were obliged to be watched, and kept awake in spite of themselves. After some time they were allowed to sleep for an hour, and were then aroused with considerable difficulty. Without these precautions, men who have been long exposed to cold would not wake again. The perils incurred in the pursuit of the whale do not always end with its capture. The operation of "flensing" or cutting up the animal, to which I alluded in the last chapter, is sometimes attended with danger. In a heavy sea, the men occupied in this disagreeable duty are liable to be washed over, or to be thrown into the monster's mouth at the risk of being suffocated. Occasionally they have their ropes broken, and are wounded by each other's knives. Scoresby mentions an instance of a man who, after the flensing was completed, happened to have his foot attached by a hook to the carcase, when it was inadvertently let go. He caught hold of the gunwale of the boat; but the whole immense mass was now suspended by his body, occasioning the most excruciating torture, and even exposing him to the risk of being torn asunder, when his companions contrived to hook afresh the carcase with a grapnel, and brought it back to the surface. Such are some of the perils which have been related by the hardy travellers of the ocean whose years have been spent in continued struggles, not only with the element, "Boundless, endless, and sublime, The image of eternity,-" but with the huge monarch of the waters, whose reign has been disputed by a greater power in creation, who "sees all things for his use." "Thou little knowest What he can brave, who, born and nurst CHAPTER VIII. THE PIRATE OF THE OCEAN. "Blood and rapine, death and slaughter Of shadows dark with doubt and evil." MAGINE, my young readers, a SHARK seventy feet long, with a tooth four inches and a half in the enamel, or the part visible above the socket, jaws with the bow above thirteen feet, and a mouth capable of gaping more than twenty-six feet around! This was one of the species of fossil sharks, an antediluvian animal, which has been discovered in the limestone rocks, the teeth and the vertebræ (small bones or joints composing the spine or back-bone) enabling the geologist to determine the species to which the animal belongs. A tooth, the size of that I have mentioned, was shown to the distinguished French naturalist, Lacépède, and, in order to discover the proportions of the animal to which it belonged, he measured first the teeth, and next the stuffed specimens of all the sharks preserved in the Museum of Natural History in Paris, and he found 90 INDISCRIMINATE APPETITE OF THE SHARK. in every instance that the relative proportions they bore to each other was as one to two hundred, and he was thus enabled to ascertain the prodigious size and capacity of this formidable antediluvian animal. Although the sharks of our own time are not of the same monstrous proportions, they are, from their immense strength and voracity, the objects of dread to those who behold them in their native element. "The type of horror and remorseless hate, The White Shark in particular, one of the largest of the tribe, and frequently weighing as much as a thousand pounds, sometimes measuring from twenty-five to thirty feet in length, abounding in warm latitudes, and attacking everything in his reach, deserves the title given to him of "the pirate of the ocean." When I tell you that a lady's work-box has been found in the stomach of one of these sharks, and the papers of a ship that had been thrown overboard; that the baskets, shavings, cordage, ducks, hens, and buffalo-hides, &c., which had been thrown into the sea one morning from Captain Hall's ship, the "Alceste," were found in the body of a captured monster shortly afterwards; that in another was discovered a tin canister, which, on being opened, was found to be nearly filled with old coins, you will have some idea of his indiscriminate appetite. He will devour even those of his own species. An anecdote is related of a Laplander capturing a shark, and fastening it to his canoe: he soon missed it, however, without an idea of how it had happened. A short time afterwards he took another shark of much larger size, in which, when opened, he found the shark he had lost. An officer states (we read in the "United Service Journal ") that when some midshipmen had caught a shark, they pulled him up in their boat, cut open his stomach, and then sent him back into the water. His body was instantly attacked by the sharks nearest to him, and was torn in pieces. The experiment was repeated with the same result. The tenacity of life in the shark family is something extraordi PREFERENCE FOR HUMAN FOOD. 91 nary. The fish has been known to be active for many hours in the sea after its head has been taken off. Instances have been known of a shark having taken a bait in the depth of the sea, after its liver had been cut out for the purpose of extracting oil, and also when the whole of the entrails had been removed. But a far worse character attaches itself to the shark, which is, his preference for human flesh of all other food, it is this which he most prizes, and numbers of persons fall victims to his voracity in the seas he frequents. It is terrible to think of such a fate, for the huge monster is not only capable of snapping off a limb in a moment, or biting a person in two, but has been known to swallow a man alive. It is also stated on good authority that a shark was taken off the island of St. Margaret, which weighed fifteen hundred pounds, and the stomach was found to contain the whole body of a horse, which had probably been thrown overboard from some ship. In the "Illustrated London News" (14th of April, 1860), the following horrible tragedy is related: "As the ship 'Karnak' was leaving the port of Nassau, a pilot fell overboard from her boat, in which he was being towed. The ship was stopped, and the boat instantly left for his rescue, while two life-buoys were thrown from the ship. The boat got close enough to give him the end of an oar, which he took, and cried, 'For God's sake save me!' The men were about to haul him into the boat, when he was carried down by a large shark which came up at the moment, taking the oar with him. A few days after the fatal accident, a shark was captured in Nassau harbour, and on being opened, the pilot's right hand and wrist, with a portion of his shirt (by which the hand was identified), a goat's head, with horns nine inches long, and a turtle's head were found in his stomach." The French name this fearful animal the Requin, or Requiem (the rest or stillness of death), in allusion to the deadly character of his habits: to add to the horror of his appearance, a phosphoric light is emitted from his huge body when near the surface of the water. To get at human flesh, the shark has been known to |