The sailor, as he said this, simply nodded toward the sea.
It needed no further pointing out to understand what he meant by the phrase “raw meat.” Scores of sharks,—both of the blue and white species,—attended by their pilots and suckers, were swimming around the carcass of the cachalot. The sea seemed alive with them. Scarce a square rod, within a circle of several hundred fathoms’ circumference, that did not exhibit their stiff, wicked-looking dorsal fins cutting sharply above the surface.
Of course the presence of the dead whale accounted for this unusual concourse of the tyrants of the deep. Not that they had any intention of directing their attack upon it: for, from the peculiar conformation of his mouth, the shark is incapable of feeding upon the carcass of a large whale. But having, no doubt, accompanied the chase at the time the cachalot had been harpooned, they were now staying by a dead body, from an instinct that told them its destroyers would return, and supply them with its flesh in convenient morsels,—while occupied in flensing it.
“Ugh!” exclaimed the sailor; “they look hungry enough to bite at any bait we may throw out to them. We won’t have much trouble in catchin’ as many o’ ’em as we want.”
“A doan b’lieve, Massa Brace, we hab got nebba such a ting as a shark-hook ’board de Cat’maran.”
“Don’t make yourself uneasy ’bout that,” rejoined the sailor, in a confident tone. “Shark-hook be blowed! I see somethin’ up yonder worth a score o’ shark-hooks. The brutes be as tame as turtles turned on their backs. They’re always so about a dead spermacety. Wi’ one o’ them ere tools as be stickin’ in the side o’ the old bull, if I don’t pull a few o’ them out o’ water, I never handled a harpoon, that’s all. Ye may stop your cookin’ Snowy, an’ go help me. When we’ve got a few sharks catched an’ cut up, then you can go at it again on a more ’stensive scale. Come along, my hearty!”
As Ben terminated his speech, he strode across the deck of the raft, and commenced clambering up on the carcass.
Snowball, who perceived the wisdom of his old comrade’s design, let go the flake of fish he had been holding in the blaze; and, parting from the pot, once more followed the sailor up the steep side of the cachalot.