The dog-days and the sultriness of August extended some of their
influence even in our fresh kingdom by the sea. The only exercise that
tempted us was swimming, and that, by Captain Mugford's permission, we
now enjoyed twice each day--before breakfast and after tea. What else
is so delightful and health-giving? The header from the brown rock from
whose sides wave the cool, green tresses of the sea! off, with a whoop,
and hands above your head, as the sun pats tricklingly your back! off,
with a spring, down head first through the deliciously cool, clear,
bracing water, that effervesces about you in bubbles of sport. Then, as
the long delicate tendrils beneath swing like sirens' arms to welcome
you, to arch the back and, leaving the alluring depths, rise through the
dark water with the ease of an eagle on his wings until your head pops
into the upper world of noise and sunlight again. The long, sharp,
regular strokes now, every muscle stretching elastically and the whole
frame electric with vigour and freshness--oh, how delicious!
Reeking with wet, we climb the rock, picking a spot where limpets are
not, and sit in that glorious sunlight, each atom of which seems to melt
into the blood. Clasping our hands about our knees, we can watch the
glory of the sun climbing higher and higher above the ocean, and, if we
choose, fancy ourselves big grapes ripening on "Lusitanian summers,"
until we are dry--which is too soon--and then with what overflowing
spirits and ravenous appetites we go, like hunters, to the house!
"Come, Marm Juno, send in the eggs and bacon. We're as hungry as
bears!"
"He! he! he! How you yun' gemmen do go on. Seems as ef you'se nebber
git nuffen ter eat at hum. 'Spects you'll git fat down 'ere! He! he!"
But our studies did not slacken because of the warm weather. Copying
Mr Clare, we all worked with a will. There was not a laggard amongst
us, I believe. There was a disposition to please one who had so grown
in our affection and respect as even to have outstripped our dear old
salt tute. He understood our youthful difficulties, sympathised with
our interests, and, not limiting his duties to hearing us recite, taught
us _how to study_.
As August waned the fishing improved, and with the little fiddler or
soldier crab we caught fish of three and four pounds instead of those of
one and two pounds that had a month ago employed us. And then the
striped bass, the _Labrus lineatus_, the king of saltwater game fish--
what splendid sport they furnished!
These last we caught, some of us with the pole and reel, some with the
hand-line. But it was active work to throw out about sixty yards of
line and then troll it quickly back through the eddies off the rocks,
where the bass fed and sported. The Captain was great at this;
despising the pole and waving the bait round and round his head, he
would throw it full a hundred yards to sea.
I tell you it was exciting to hook a five or six pounder and have him
make off with a lurch. Pay out then, quick, quick, just keeping a
"feel" of the fellow's mouth, and as he slacks his speed, tauten your
line, and pull in with all your strength. Slower now, as he begins to
haul back. Now look out; he is off again with a mightier spring and
greater speed than before. Pay out, quick and steady. So, again and
again, his strength getting less and less, until you can tow him up to
the rock, and your companion put the gaff in his ruddy gills.
Many a noble fish escaped; many a line and hook snapped in the warfare.
Sometimes a much larger fish would take hold, and two of us would have
to pull on the line stretched like wire. During the season we took a
seven-pounder, one of eight, and one of ten pounds, and Captain Mugford,
alone on the rocks, one stormy morning, when we boys were in school,
captured a royal fellow of twelve pounds, and brought it for our
admiring gaze as we went to dinner. Mr Clare promised to beat that,
but he never did.
One Saturday afternoon, about the last of August, just after a somewhat
heavy gale, which had been blowing for a couple of days, we all repaired
to Bass Rocks, though the sky was drizzling yet, and the spray of the
waves dashed at every blow clear over our stand.
It was apparently a splendid time for our friends, the labrus, but we
did not get a bite. We persevered, however, fresh baiting the hooks,
and throwing out again and again, with not a fin to flash after them
through the curdled waters.
Harry Higginson, having been very unlucky before this, losing several
strong lines, had provided himself this time with one which, he said,
could hold a hundred-pounder--the line consisting of two thick flaxen
lines plaited together. He had it rigged on his pole. Grown careless
from the ill-luck we had met, he at length let his bait sink to the
bottom, about thirty yards from the rocks, and got talking with the
Captain, who had given up fishing, and, with his sou'wester pulled about
his ears, was taking a comfortable pipe in a crevice of the biggest
rock.
Suddenly I heard a reel go clork--cle-erk cleerk! and saw Harry's pole
fall from his hands to the rock. He seized it in a second, but as he
stopped the revolving of the reel, the pole bent, and he pulled back on
it--Snap! It was gone in the middle of the second joint. Of course the
line remained, and that he commenced pulling in, bestowing the while
some pretty hard expressions on his bad luck, for it really seemed as if
the once-hooked fish had gone off in safety. About ten yards of the
line came in slack, and then it stopped.
"Fast to a rock! What luck!" cried Harry, and then he commenced to
jerk.
As he turned to look at us, with an expression of sarcastic
indifference, I saw the line straightening out again in a steady, slow
way, as if it was attached to an invisible canal-boat.
"Hold fast," I cried; "look! you have got something. What can it be?"
saying which, Harry commenced to pull, but in vain--the prey went ahead.
Captain Mugford had taken the pipe from his mouth as his attention was
fastened by the strange manoeuvres of Harry's game. Things having come
to such a bewildering pass, he put up his pipe and, shaking the folds of
the sou'wester from about his head, sprung forward and took hold of the
line with Harry, but it still ran out through their hands.
"Seventeen seventy-six! what a whopper," exclaimed the Captain. "We
must let go another anchor--eh, Harry?"
"Indeed! yes," replied Harry. "Look! he is stopping, and seems to be
shaking the hook as a cat would a mouse. What can it be?"
Now the unknown took a tack towards us, and the line was gathered in and
kept tight, and, as he began to go about on another course, his enemies
took advantage of his momentary sluggishness to haul with considerable
effect on the line. That brought the rascal right under the rocks. We
could not see him; only the commotion of the water. Being brought up
with such a short turn maddened the fellow, and perhaps he began to
realise what was giving him such a jaw-ache. At any rate, just then he
showed his speed to the whole length of the line, rushing off like a
locomotive, and cutting his enemies fingers to the bones. They held on,
however, and were able to bring him to as his charge slackened.
Of course the others of us hauled in our lines and watched with
eagerness the combat so exciting. We proffered advice of all kinds to
the two fishers, which they did not heed but devised schemes as the
moment required, and certainly they managed with great skill. You would
have thought the Captain was on deck in a hurricane, or repelling the
boarders of a Malay pirate. The pipe was jammed up to its bowl in the
side of his mouth, and all he said came in jerks through his teeth.
We were perfectly in the dark as to what the fish might be--whether an
immense cod or halibut, or a princely bass.
The fight went on for half an hour without any decided result. But
after that the struggles of the fish occupied a smaller space, never
taking more than half the line out now. He was nearer the surface too,
and the quick slaps of a tremendous tail lashed the sea.
"Mr Clare," called out Captain Mugford, "won't you twist two of the
boys' lines together and bend them on that gaff? By the way, there is a
hatchet with us, is there not? Good! Have that and the gaff ready. We
are tiring the animal, whatever it is--a shark, I suspect."
Whilst we were carrying out the Captain's orders, Harry cried, "See,
see! there is the whole length of him. Yes, a shark. What a grand
beast!"
They were tiring him--worrying the strength and fierceness out of him.
Every turn was bringing him nearer the rock. Every dash of his was
weaker. But it must have been fully an hour from the first rush he made
before he was brought exhausted alongside of the rocks, and the Captain
cried, "Put in the gaff, Mr Clare--hard deep!"
Well was it that a strong line had been made fast to the gaff, for as
its big hook struck him behind the gills, he uttered a sound like the
moan of a child, and flapped off, the gaff remaining in him, into deep
water.
With the two lines and his exhausted state, it was comparatively easy to
bring him to the rocks again, and then with blows of the hatchet we had
soon murdered him. Even then it was a job of some moment to get the
body safely up the slimy and uneven rocks.
At length our prey was well secured, and we stood about him in triumph.
It was a shark, measuring five feet and three inches in length, and he
must certainly have weighed nearly a hundred pounds.
From the study Mr Clare made of the subject, we found that the name by
which the shark is technically known is _Squalidae_, which includes a
large family fitly designated, as your Latin dictionary will prove when
you find the adjective _squalidus_--"filthy, slovenly, loathsome." It
is a family of many species, there being some thirty or forty cousins;
and the different forms of the teeth, snout, mouth, lips, and tail-fins,
the existence or absence of eyelids, spiracles, (those are the apertures
by which the water taken in for respiration is thrown out again), the
situation of the different fins, etcetera, distinguish the different
divisions of the common family. The cousin who, wandering about that
stormy Saturday, had frightened away the bass, and finally astonished
himself by swallowing a fish-hook when he only thought to suck a dainty
bit of his family's favourite delicacy, was known as the _Zygaena_--so
Mr Clare introduced him to us when his sharkship had grown so
exceedingly diffident as not to be able to say one word for himself--a
genus distinguished by having the sides of the head greatly prolonged in
a horizontal direction, from which circumstance they are commonly known
as the hammer-headed sharks.
His teeth were in three rows, the points of the teeth being directed
towards the corners of the mouth. The two back rows were bent down, and
only intended, Mr Clare told us, to replace the foremost when injured.
These horrible teeth were notched like a saw.
I think the face, if so you might call it, of that piratical fish wore
the most fearfully cruel and rapacious expression I had ever seen. That
_Zygaena_ family of the _Squalidae_, (I think they sound more horribly
devilish when called by their classical titles), is one dangerous to
man, and it is very rare that a man-eating or man-biting shark is ever
found on the English coast.
I proposed to cut him open, and so we did. Among the half-digested
food, most of which was fish, I found something that at first looked
like a leather strap. I seized it and pulled it out. Surely there was
a buckle. I washed and laid it out on the rock, while we all gathered
about in great excitement to make out what our dead enemy had been
preying on. There was no longer a doubt that it was a dog-collar--the
collar of a medium-sized dog, perhaps a spaniel or terrier. There was a
plate on it, which, with a little rubbing, we made to read, "David
Atherton, Newcastle." How very strange! Had the little fellow been
washed overboard from some vessel? or had he swum off some neighbouring
beach to bring a stick for his master?
We could never discover any antecedents of any kind whatever to that
mysterious sequel to "The Romance of the Poor Young Dog." Was there a
fond master mourning for him in Newcastle, England, or in Newcastle,
Pennsylvania? Alas, poor dog! thou wert hastily snatched from this
world--the ocean thy grave and a shark's belly thy coffin. Thy collar
hangs, as I write this, over my study table, and many a time has my old
Ponto sniffed at that relic of a fellow-dog, and his eyes grown moist as
I repeated to him my surmises of the sad fate of David Atherton's
companion.
Mr Clare told us a good deal about sharks. Of the many varieties, the
most hideous is the Wolf-fish, (_Anarrhicas lupus_). Though much
smaller than the white shark, he is a very formidable creature. He has
six rows of grinders in each jaw, excellently adapted for bruising the
crabs, lobsters, scallops, and large whelks, which the voracious animal
grinds to pieces, and swallows along with the shells. When caught, it
fastens with indiscriminate rage upon anything within its reach, fights
desperately, even when out of the water, and inflicts severe wounds if
not avoided cautiously. Schonfeld relates this wolf-fish will seize on
an anchor and leave the marks of its teeth in it, and Steller mentions
one on the coast of Kamschatka, which he saw lay hold of a cutlass, with
which a man was attempting to kill it, and break it to bits as if it had
been made of glass. This monster is, from its great size, one of the
most formidable denizens of the ocean; in the British waters it attains
the length of six or seven feet, and is said to be much larger in the
more Northern seas. It usually frequents the deep parts of the sea, but
comes among the marine plants of the coast in spring, to deposit its
spawn. It swims rather slowly, and glides along with somewhat of the
motion of an eel.
The white shark is far more dreadful, from its gigantic size and
strength; its jaws are also furnished with from three to six rows of
strong, flat, triangular, sharp-pointed, and finely serrated teeth,
which it can raise or depress at will.
This brute grows to a length of thirty feet, and its strength may be
imagined from the fact that a young shark, only six feet long, has been
known to break a man's leg by a stroke of its tail. Therefore, when
sailors have caught a shark at sea, with a baited hook, the first thing
they do when it is drawn upon deck is to chop off its tail, to prevent
the mischief to be dreaded from its immense strength.
Hughes, the author of the "Natural History of Barbadoes," relates an
anecdote which gives a good idea of the nature of this monster: "In the
reign of Queen Anne a merchant ship from England arrived at Barbadoes;
some of the crew, ignorant of the danger of doing so, were bathing in
the sea, when a large shark suddenly appeared swimming directly towards
them. All hurried on board, and escaped, except one unfortunate fellow,
who was bit in two by the shark. A comrade and friend of the man,
seeing the severed body of his companion, vowed instant revenge. The
voracious shark was seen swimming about in search of the rest of his
prey, when the brave lad leaped into the water. He carried in his hand
a long, sharp-pointed knife, and the fierce monster pushed furiously
towards him. Already he had turned over, and opened his huge, deadly
jaws, when the youth, diving cleverly, seized the shark somewhere near
the fins with his left hand, and stabbed him several times in the belly.
The creature, mad with pain and streaming with blood, attempted vainly
to escape. The crews of the ships near saw that the fight was over, but
knew not which was slain, till, as the shark became exhausted, he rose
nearer the shore, and the gallant assailant still continuing his
efforts, was able, with assistance, to drag him on shore. There he
ripped open the stomach of the shark and took from it the half of his
friend's body, which he then buried together with the trunk half."
The negroes are admirable swimmers and divers, and they sometimes attack
and vanquish the terrible shark, but great skill is necessary.
When Sir Brooke Watson, as a youth, was in the West Indies, he was once
swimming near a ship when he saw a shark making towards him. He cried
out in terror for help, and caught a rope thrown to him; but even as the
men were drawing him up the side of the vessel, the monster darted
after, and took off his leg at a single snap.
Fortunately for sea-bathers on our shores, the white shark and the
monstrous hammer-headed _zygaena_ seldom appear in the colder latitudes,
though both have occasionally been seen on the British coasts.
The northern ocean has its peculiar sharks, but some are good-natured,
like the huge basking shark, (_S maximus_), and feed on seaweeds and
medusae and the rest, such as the _picked_ dog-fish, (_Galeus
acanthius_), are, although fierce, of too small a size to be dangerous
to man.
But the dog-fish and others, such as the blue shark, are very
troublesome and injurious to the fisherman; though they do not venture
to attack him, for they hover about his boat and cut the hooks from his
lines. Indeed, this sometimes leads to their own destruction; and when
their teeth do not deliver them from their difficulty, the blue sharks,
which hover about the coast of Cornwall during the pilchard season, roll
their bodies round so as to twine the line about them in its whole
length, and often in such a way that Mr Yarrell has known a fisherman
give up as hopeless the attempt to unroll it.
This shark is very dangerous to the pilchard drift-net, and very often
will pass along the whole length of net, cutting out, as if with shears,
the fish and the net which holds them, and swallowing both together.