Chapter 9. Big Fishing--A Strange Dissection

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_ CHAPTER NINE. BIG FISHING--A STRANGE DISSECTION

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. _

Read next: Chapter 10. Ugly--Plover, Snipe, And Rabbit Shooting--A Cruise Proposed

Read previous: Chapter 8. The Regatta--The Duel

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