A Sack of Shakings

by Frank Thomas Bullen

Before we dismiss the remora to his beloved rest again it is worthy of notice that he himself gives unwilling hospitality to another sociable creature. It is a little crustacean, rather like an exaggerated woodlouse, but without the same power of curling itself into a ball. It is of a pearly white colour, very sluggish in its movements, but with tenacious hooks upon its many legs it holds on securely to the inside of the sucker’s mouth near the gill-slits, being there provided with all the needs of its existence, without the slightest effort of its own. Its chief interest to naturalists lies in its strange likeness to the fossil trilobites so plentifully scattered among various geological strata.

But while you have been watching the remora a visitor from the vast openness around has arrived, as if glad of the society afforded by the ship. Yet in this case the idea seems a fond conceit, because the new-comer is only a “jelly-fish,” or “Medusa.” It is really an abuse of language to use the word “fish” in connection with such an almost impalpable entity as the Medusa, because while a fish is an animal high up the scale of the vertebrata, a Medusa is almost at the bottom of the list of created things. When floating in the sea it is an exceedingly pretty object, with its clear, mushroom-shaped disc uppermost, and long fringe of feathery filaments, sometimes delicately coloured, waving gracefully beneath with each pulsation of the whole mass. It has no power of independent locomotion, no—but, there, it is not easy to say what it has got, since if you haul one up in a bucket and lay it on deck in the sun, it will melt entirely away, leaving not a trace behind except two or three tiny morsels of foreign matter which did not belong to its organism at all. Yet if one of these masses of jelly comes into contact with your bare skin it stings like a nettle, for it secretes, in some mysterious way, an acrid fluid that serves it instead of many organs possessed by further advanced creatures. As the present subject passes beneath your gaze you notice quite a little cluster of tiny fish smaller even than full-grown tittlebats, perhaps a dozen or so, who look strangely forlorn in the middle of the ocean. It may be that this sense of loneliness leads them to seek the shelter of something larger than themselves, something which will be a sort of rallying-point in such a wide world of waters.

Perhaps the lovely streamers dangling have aroused their curiosity, but, whatever the motive, you see the little group, huddled round the Medusa, popping in and out from the edge of the disc, through which you can plainly see them as they pass beneath. It is quite pretty to watch those innocent games of the sportive little fish, but presently you notice that one of them doesn’t play any more. He is entangled among those elegant fringes and hangs like a little silver streak, brightening and fading as it is turned by the pulsatory movement of the Medusa. And if you could watch it long enough you would see it gradually disappear, absorbed into the jelly-like substance by the solvent secreted by the Medusa for that purpose. Still unconscious of their companion’s fate, the other little victims continue to play in that treacherous neighbourhood, voluntarily supplying the needs of an organism immeasurably beneath them in the sum-total of all those details that go to make up conscious life.

Closely gathered about the rudder and stern-post is another group of larger fish, the several individuals being from 4 in. to 8 in. long, and most elegant in shape and colour. They evidently seek the ship for protection, for they scarcely ever leave her vicinity for more than 2 ft. or 3 ft. If one of them does dart away that distance after some, to you, imperceptible morsel of food, it is back again in a flash, sidling up to her sheathing closer than ever, as if dreadfully alarmed at its own temerity. A small hook baited with a fragment of meat will enable you to catch one if only you can get it to fall close enough to the rudder—no easy matter, because of the great overhang of the stern. In the old-fashioned ships, where the rudder-head moved in a huge cavity called the rudder-trunk, I have often caught them by dropping my hook down there, and very sweet-eating little fish they were. Sailors call them “rudder-fish,” a trivial name derived from their well-known habit, but they are really a species of “caranx,” and akin to the mackerel tribe, which has so many representatives among deep-water fish. They are, perhaps, the most sociable of all the fish that visit a ship far out at sea; but they present the same problem that the crab did a little while ago: What becomes of them when a breeze springs up and the vessel puts on speed?

I have often watched them at the beginning of a breeze, swimming steadily along by the side of the stern-post, so as to be clear of the eddies raised by the rudder; but it was always evident that a rate of over three knots would leave them astern very soon. Not less curious is the speculation as to whence they come so opportunely. There seems to be very few of them, yet an hour or two’s calm nearly always shows a little company of them cowering in their accustomed place. As you watch them wonderingly, a broad blaze of reflected light draws your attention to the splendid shape of a dolphin gliding past and exposing the silver shield of his side to the sun’s rays, which radiate from it with an almost unbearable glare. At that instant every one of the little fish beneath you gather into one compact bunch, so close to the stern-post that they look as if part of it. When they can no longer keep up with the ship’s protecting bulk how do they escape the jaws of such beautiful ravenous monsters as that which has just passed? The swift flying-fish cannot do so, even with the swallow-like speed that he possesses and the power of skimming through the air for a thousand yards at a flight. What chance, then, can our shrinking little companions possibly have, or how do they survive amidst so many enemies? It is an unsolvable mystery.

What is this cold grey shadow stealing along through the bright blue water by the keel? A shark, and a big one too. No one doubts the reason for his sociability; in fact, he (or she) is credited by most sailors with a most uncanny knowledge of what is going on aboard any ship he chooses to honour with his company. We need not be so foolish as to believe any of these childish stories, especially when the obvious explanation lies so closely on the surface. Heredity accounts for a great many things that have long been credited with supernatural origins, and the shark’s attachment to the society of ships is so plainly hereditary that the slightest thought upon the subject will convince any unbiased person of the reasonableness of the explanation. For many generations the shark, born scavenger that he is, has learned to associate the huge shadow cast by a ship with food, not perhaps in such mountainous abundance as that provided by the carcass of a dead whale, but still scattering savoury morsels at fairly regular intervals. From its earliest days—when, darting in and out of its mother’s capacious jaws, it has shared in the spoil descending from passing ships—to the end of what is often a very long life, ships and food are inseparably associated in whatever answers to its mind in the shark. Man, alive or dead, always makes a welcome change of diet to a fish that, by reason of his build, is unable to prey upon other fish as do the rest of his neighbours.

As I have said elsewhere, the shark eats man because man is easy to catch, not because he likes man’s flesh better than any other form of food, as many landsmen and even sailors believe. But the shark is only able to gratify his sociable instincts in calms or very light airs. He is far too slothful, too constitutionally averse to exertion, to expend his energies in the endeavour to keep up with a ship going at even a moderate rate of speed. Let the wind drop, however, and in few parts of the sea will you be without a visit from a shark for many hours. In one vessel that I sailed in the skipper had such a delicate nose that he could not bear the stench of the water in which the day’s allowance of salt meat had been steeped to get some of the pickle out of it. So he ordered a strong net to be made of small rope, and into this the meat was put, the net secured to a stout line, and hung over the stern just low enough to dip every time the vessel curtsied. The plan answered admirably for some time, until one night the wind fell to a calm, and presently the man at the wheel heard a great splash behind him. He rushed to the taffrail and looked over, just in time to see the darkness beneath all aglow with phosphorescence, showing that some unusual agitation had recently taken place. He ran to the net-lanyard, and, taking a good pull, fell backward on deck, for there was nothing fast to it. Net and meat were gone. The skipper was much vexed, of course, that the net hadn’t been hauled up a little higher when it fell calm, for, as he told the mate, anybody ought to know that 30 lbs. of salt pork dangling overboard in a calm was enough to call a shark up from a hundred miles away.

As this particular shark, now sliding stealthily along the keel towards the stern, becomes more clearly visible, you notice what looks at first like a bright blue patch on top of his head. But, strange to say, it is not fixed; it shifts from side to side, backwards and forwards, until, as the big fish rises higher, you make it out to be the pretty little caranx that shares with the crocodile and buffalo birds the reputation of being the closest possible companion and chum of so strangely diverse an animal to himself. And now we are on debatable ground, for this question of the sociability of the pilot-fish with the shark has been most hotly argued. And perhaps, like the cognate question of the flight of flying-fish, it is too much to hope that any amount of first-hand testimony will avail to settle it now. Still, if a man will but honestly state what he has seen, not once, but many times repeated, his evidence ought to have some weight in the settlement of even the most vexed questions. Does the pilot-fish love the shark? Does it even know that the shark is a shark, a slow, short-sighted, undiscriminating creature whose chief characteristic is that of never-satisfied hunger? In short, does the pilot-fish attach itself to the shark as a pilot, with a definite object in view, or is the attachment merely the result of accident? Let us see.

Here is a big shark-hook, upon which we stick a mass of fat pork two or three pounds in weight. Fastening a stout rope to it, we drop it over the stern with a splash. The eddies have no sooner smoothed away than we see the brilliant little blue and gold pilot-fish coming towards our bait at such speed that we can hardly detect the lateral vibrations of his tail. Round and round the bait he goes, evidently in a high state of excitement, and next moment he has darted off again as rapidly as he came. He reaches the shark, touches him with his head on the nose, and comes whizzing back again to the bait, followed sedately by the dull-coloured monster. As if impatient of his huge companion’s slowness he keeps oscillating between him and the bait until the shark has reached it and, without hesitation, has turned upon his back to seize it, if such a verb can be used to denote the deliberate way in which that gaping crescent of a mouth enfolds the lump of pork. Nothing, you think, can increase the excitement of the little attendant now. He seems ubiquitous, flashing all round the shark’s jaws as if there were twenty of him at least. But when half-a-dozen men, “tailing on” to the rope, drag the shark slowly upward out of the sea, the faithful little pilot seems to go frantic with—what shall we call it?—dread of losing his protector, affection, anger, who can tell?