When they were close to her they made a sudden dash, the lean shark leaping high in air and falling with a tremendous whack upon the sleeping victim, while his mother chopped her savagely in the sides. It was all so sudden he hardly had time to get away, for in an instant the sleeping whale awoke and tore the sea into foam with her flukes.
His mother, however, heeded the outfly but little and held gamely on. The whale tried to turn and seize her in the long thin jaw that was studded with enormous teeth, but nothing could dislodge the grip of her triangles. And all the time the thin fellow in company would throw himself in the air and smash the whale terrific blows with his lean tail.
The noise must have been an uproar, for in a very few minutes the great leader who had been rubbing his belly came plunging through the water towards them, leaving a great path of white foam to mark his course.
Then the whale sounded, carrying his mother out of sight below. Instead of following, the thresher shark dodged the great bull leader and made off, leaving the mother shark to get away as best she could.
She came up with the whale half a mile away, and then finding herself deserted she let go and started to make off. As she did so she encountered the big bull coming after her. She ducked from his bite, but he smote her such a blow with his flukes as she dodged past that she was hardly able to escape.
The next day she grew weaker, and a sword-fish, seeing her, gave her a final taste of his weapon, and began to chop her up. Instead of driving him away, several other sharks, that now appeared, openly joined him in accomplishing her destruction, and soon she disappeared entirely.
With no protection save his own teeth, the little shark now went his way among the peaks. Deep down in the blue abyss he would sink until the terrible pressure would force him up again to the world of sunlight. Sometimes he would stay for hours a mile or more down in caverns and caves of the mountain side, guided alone by the sense of smell and that delicate sense of feeling peculiar to his kind. Each and every motion of the sea caused a vibration that instinct explained. Once a huge arm reached out from a hiding place and circled him within its embrace, but before it could draw him in he had chopped it in two, and leisurely ate what remained as he swam on.
He was growing strong now, and his triangular teeth developed saw edges, making the most perfect cutting machines possible to devise. His skin was tough and coarse, a bony substance forming upon it that made it almost tooth-proof to ordinary fish.
He developed a roving disposition, and the vicinity of the great mountain became too well known. He started off to the westward where the sun seemed to sink in a deep golden-red ocean, and he cruised along near the surface, his dorsal fin and tip of tail just awash.
Out upon the lonely ocean he quickened his movement. There was nothing, nothing but the never-ending sea ahead, with the soft murmur of the trade wind turning the glistening surface a darker blue, while from miles and miles away to windward came the low song of the South Sea.