Hardly were these words spoken before the great harpooned tail of the wily monster in question gave a vigorous swish, a smooth, mouse-coloured body shot up through the water, and two triple rows of gleaming ivory opened and closed upon—nothing more or less than a bare hook that its owner was pulling up for rebaiting after it had been dextrously stripped by the "sleight-of-mouth" performance of some member of the ruck down among the pink coral.
Yet the general trend of the gastronomic preferences of the sharks of any single bay, or island, or even group of islands, is usually understood sufficiently well for all practical purposes, and if the natives or old European residents advise against bathing in certain localities, it is best not to take the chance. In few parts of the South Pacific are sharks more plentiful than around Mbau, the old native capital of Fiji, but in spite of the fact that the natives, whether engaged in fishing or turtle-catching, or merely swimming for pleasure, expose themselves constantly in the waters infested by these monsters, loss of life from that source is rarely heard of.
It was while I was "convalescing" from the effects of the field-day with the natives of Mbau, of which I wrote in the last chapter, that I was sitting in the shade of the veranda of the Roku's bungalow, watching with no little enjoyment the antics of a big band of supremely happy youngsters who were disporting themselves in the limpid waters that lapped the sea-wall at that point. Presently a number of men came down to the wall, straightened out the coils of some heavy lines, baited up a lot of big chain-leadered hooks, and began hurling them into the sea but a few yards from where the boys were swimming.
"Wake up!" I shouted to my young friend, Tom B——, giving his hammock a vigorous shake. "Isn't it rather a risky business throwing shark-hooks in where a lot of naked boys are swimming? What if they should snag one of the youngsters?"
"Boys'r' all right," came in a muffled yawn from under B——'s palm-leaf hat. "Those chaps aren't fishing for boys; only fishing for sharks."
"Sharks!" I scoffed. "Sharks in there where those boys are swimming! Wake up, young man; you're talking in your sleep!"
Thus admonished, B—— sat up, yawned, stretched himself, cracked a coconut, took several long draughts of its cool contents, and finally explained that, as a rule, sharks along the windward shore of Vita Levu did not care much for boys, especially near those localities, like Mbau, where it was the custom to fish for them daily with succulent hunks of salt pork.
Sharks are fairly numerous in all of the ports visited by the ships which carry the mail from New Zealand and Australia to the islands of the Southwestern Pacific, and it is rarely that one of these steamers is seen at anchor without from one to half a dozen lines dangling from its stern. Watching a shark line is a tedious business, but it is strictly necessary in order that the fisherman may know when the monster is hooked. Otherwise, its frantic rushes, if allowed to go unchecked, are pretty sure to cause some part of the line, leader, or even a portion of its own anatomy to give way, resulting in its escape. The school-boy's scheme of tying the line around the big toe and going to sleep would probably work all right as far as rousing the fisherman was concerned, but the sequel might not leave him in a condition to give undivided attention to landing his prize. To this end the sailors of the mail-boats have hit on an ingenious plan. Instead of taking in their lines when the dinner gong sounds or when, for any reason, they are on duty elsewhere, they run a stout piece of marlin twine from the shark-line up to the steam whistle, leaving it for the "man-eater" himself to announce the event of his being hooked by sounding a toot.
Shark on the beach at Mbau