“Well, I don’t exactly know, sir, as you would call it remarkable” he answered; “but there’s something visible over the starn as perhaps the lady might like to see.”
“Oh!” answered Leslie. “Then let us have a look at it.”
And offering his hand to Miss Trevor, he assisted her to mount the grating and led her to the taffrail, over which they both leaned, gazing down into the black profundity beneath them.
The brig was travelling at the rate of about six knots; at which speed she was wont to create a considerable amount of disturbance in the element through which she ploughed her passage; the water was brilliantly phosphorescent, and as a result of this the wake of the brig was on this occasion a mass of sea-fire, the foam that she churned up on either side of her glowing and sparkling with luminous clouds interspersed with thousands of tiny stars that waxed and waned with every plunge of the vessel. The water was almost as transparent as air itself, and by leaning out over the taffrail it was possible to see the rudder, the brig’s “heel,” and a considerable amount of her “run,” all aglow with bluish white light that streamed away far astern like a miniature Milky Way. It was a beautiful spectacle, and one at which an imaginative person might have gazed for a full hour or more without tiring. But Tom, the helmsman, was not an imaginative man, and the spectacle of a ship’s wake glowing and scintillating with sea-stars was one that he had beheld so often that it had long ceased to appeal to him as anything at all uncommon. It was something else that had attracted his attention, and that he had thought might interest “the lady.” For there, in the very thickest of the swirling mass of clouds and discs and circles and stars of sea-fire, at a depth of perhaps six feet below the surface, was to be seen, brilliantly illuminated by its own movement through the water, the glowing shape of an enormous shark, fully twenty feet in length, keeping pace with the brig as steadily as if he were being towed by her. The whole bulk of the monster was clearly, startlingly, distinct, much more so than would have been the case at daytime, for his body showed against the black water like a shape of white fire, while with every sweep of his powerful tail he scattered a trail of glowing sparks behind him that constituted of itself quite a respectable wake.
“Oh, what a dreadful creature!” exclaimed Miss Trevor, shrinking back in dismay at the sight. “It is like a nightmare! That must surely be a shark; is it not? It is the first shark I have ever seen, Mr Leslie; and I am certain that I never wish to see another. I had no idea that sharks were such monstrous creatures; I always thought that they were about the same size as the porpoises that we were looking at this afternoon.”
“Yes,” laughed Leslie, “very possibly. This, however, is rather an exceptionally fine fellow, although I have seen even bigger specimens than he. Do not look at him too long,” he continued, “or possibly you may dream of him, in which case he would be likely to prove a nightmare to you indeed.”
“He’ve been followin’ of us for the last hour, sir,” remarked the helmsman. “And they do say that when a shark hangs on to a ship like that, somebody’s goin’ to die aboard of her.”
“Yes,” answered Leslie, carelessly, “I have heard that story myself; but I don’t believe it, for I have been in ships that have been followed for days on end by sharks, without anything coming of it—except that we have generally managed to catch the sharks themselves at last. No; this fellow is following us because he happens to be hungry, and hopes that the cook will heave overboard enough scraps to take the sharp edge off his appetite. But the dew is falling very heavily, Miss Trevor; had not you better fetch up a wrap?”
“No, thanks,” answered the girl, as she moved away and extended her hand for him to help her down off the grating on to the deck; “it is growing late, so I will bid you good night and go to my cabin.”
“Sorry to hear that Mr Purchas is bad, sir,” observed Tom, tentatively, when Miss Trevor had vanished down the companion ladder. “Hope it ain’t nothin’ serious?”