THE WHITE SHARK. 367

great agony if its contortions may be ‘aken as evidence, and,
after exhausting itself with its fury, allowed itself to drift away
with the tide. Expert swimmers, armed with long sharp
knives, have sometimes engaged the shark single-handed, diving
underneath it, and stabbing it before it discovered their where-
abouts. The Negroes of the West Indies are credited with
this hardihood, and are said to be frequently successful.
Sharks in ‘*The amphibious South Sea Islanders,” says
the South Mr. Wood, ‘‘stand in great dread of the Shark,
Seas. and with good reason, for not a year elapses with-
out several victims falling to the rapacity of this terrific animal.
Nearly thirty of the natives of the Society Islands were de-
stroyed at one time by the sharks. A storm had so injured
the canoe in which they were passing from one island to an-
other, that they were forced to take refuge on a raft hastily
formed of the fragments of their canoe. Their weight sunk
the raft a foot or two below the surface of the water, and,
dreadful to say, the sharks surrounded them and dragged
them off the raft one by one, until the lightened raft rose
above the water and preserved the few survivors.”’ Mrs.
Bowdich, who was an eye-witness of the tragic circumstances
she describes, says :—‘‘ Sharks abounded at Cape Coast, and
one day, as I stood at a window commanding a view of the
sea, I saw some of the inhabitants of the town bathing, and
the sharks hastening to seize upon them,—they being visible
from always swimming with part of their dorsal fin out of
water. I sent to warn the men of their danger, and all came
ashore except one, who laughed at the caution of his compan-
ions. A huge shark was rapidly approaching, and I sent my
servant again, and this time armed with half a bottle of rum,
to bribe the man to save himself. It was too late, theymur-
derous creature had seized him, and the water around was dyed
with his blood. A canoe was dispatched to bring him ashore,
but a wave threw him on to the beach ; and it was found that
the shark had taken the thigh bone completely out of the

”?