“Ho! Massa Brace!” he cried, once more taking the steel from between his teeth. “Swim roun’ to de right. Keep a-gwine in de circle. For de Lord sake, keep ahind me, or you loss fo’ sartin!”
The sailor scarcely needed the counsel. He saw the danger before Snowball had spoken, and had already commenced the movement which the Coromantee was requesting him to make.
Once more the tableau changed. The dramatis persona in their relative positions first formed an isosceles triangle, then a scalene, afterwards a right line. Now all were moving in a circle, or rather in three circles concentric to one another; the sailor, with his charge, revolving round the centre, Snowball in mid radius, while the shark, flanked by his satellites, went gliding along the outer circumference, his lurid eyes glaring continually inward, as if watching for an opportunity to break the line so carefully guarded by the Coromantee!
For full five minutes was this “ring” performance kept up, without any great alteration occurring in the relative positions of the parties. But it was a game in which the outside player had all the advantage; for, although the zygaena had by far the greater distance to traverse, what was but sport to it was fatigue and the danger of drowning to its adversaries.
Had its skull been of a different formation, and filled with a better set of brains, it would have endeavoured to keep up that game, without in the least degree changing the mode of playing it. In due time, its chief antagonist, Snowball, must have cried quarter or gone to the bottom; and far sooner must have sunk the weighted swimmer in his wake.
But sharks, like other creatures both aquatic and terrestrial, have their moments of impatience and anger; and the zygaena, yielding to these passions, common to both piscine and human nature, at length determined to break through the rules of the game, and bring the play to an abrupt termination.
In obedience to this impulse, it suddenly swerved from its circular course, and, heading towards the spot where Ben Brace, with Lilly Lalee clinging to his shoulder, was performing his shorter revolutions, it made a reckless and determined rush for the centre,—equally regardless of the admonition of its brace of monitors and the cold steel of the Coromantee, gleaming clear under the water through which it would have to make its way. So near had it to pass to the negro’s flat nose that its glutinous skin would be almost in contact with his prominent lips, and with his outstretched hand he need have no difficulty in striking his slippery antagonist.
Had Snowball been anticipating this change of tactics, he could not have acted more adroitly, or with greater promptness. As the zygaena was gliding onward, and just as its rough pectoral passed within an inch of his nose, he suddenly returned the knife between his teeth, and, simultaneously using both hands and limbs, he sprang upward in the waiter, and, with a vigorous effort, launched himself on its back!
In the next instant he was seen,—or might have been seen,—with one hand, the left, firmly grasping the bony protuberance of the zygaena’s left eye, his muscular fingers deeply imbedded in the socket, while his right, clutching the long knife, was inflicting a series of stabs against the side of his adversary, now flashing high in the air, now gleaming under water, going up and down with all the measured regularity of a trip-hammer.
When it pleased the Coromantee to dismount from his slippery saddle, the zygaena floated by his side,—a carcass stained with its own blood, that for fathoms around encrimsoned the azure waters of the ocean!