THE SHARK AND HIS HABITS.
Far as the breeze can bear, or billows foam,
All seas their kingdom, and each clime their home.
As free as a bird says the proverb—as free as a fish say we; for if fish be not their own masters, who are? No other creature has half the facilities for shifting quarters and changing domicile that he has. Furnished with a body in itself a perfect locomotive, a vigorous tail for a piston, and cerebral energy in lieu of steam, the sea offers itself as a railroad of communication and transport in every direction, and the North or South Pole is the only natural terminus to the journey. Man cannot compete with fish here; for few, from various lets and hindrances, care to vagabondize at will, and of these, fewer still possess the means of indulging their fancies—yachts. The yacht animal enjoys himself, no doubt, cruising about the high seas for amusement; but this pleasure has risks, as well as obvious limits. Squalls may upset, or whirlpools engulf the frail craft; the masts may be struck by lightning, the keel by sunk rocks; her rudder may be carried away; her sails torn to ribbons; her ribs melt in the red glare of fire on board; or, if she adventure too far in northern latitudes, the crew is liable to incarceration; and fortunate if, after six months’ bumping, “nipping,” and crushing, they bring her off at last, and manage to escape white bears, famine, and an icy grave. Besides these liabilities to mischief, the wants of those on board compel constant forced halts; here for coal, there for water, and sundry runnings into harbor in dirty weather to the delay of the ship’s voyage; all which “touchings” in order to “go” must retard a sigh in its passage from Indus to the Pole exceedingly.
In birds, wings supply the place and greatly exceed the efficiency of sails; but even wings have their limitations of action, and are also subject to many mishaps. Birds can neither soar toward heaven, nor skim across the waters without being continually made sensible of this; the stoutest pinion cannot long beat the icy air of high altitudes, and remain unnumbed; thus high and no higher may the eagle æronaut mount; and among birds of passage how many thousands die in transit to another continent; who, trusting—like Icarus—to uncertain wings, drop into and cover whole roods of ocean with their feathery carcases.
Quadrupeds again, are even more restricted in wandering over the earth; natural obstacles are continually presenting so many bars to progress in advance: the dry and thirsty desert where no water is; inaccessible snow-capped mountain ridges; the impenetrable screen of forest-trees; the broad lake; the unfordable and rapid river; the impassable line of a sea-girt shore; any of these impediments are enough to keep beasts within an area of no very great range. Thus it fares with all creatures, denizens of either earth or air; but none of these obstacles impede the activity of fish. They may swim anywhere, and everywhere, through the boundless expanse of waters; and, in defiance of trade-winds and storms, traverse the open seas at every season, unchecked; surrounded on all sides with suitable food, and finding at different depths a temperature alike congenial to health and comfort, whether in the torrid or the frozen zone. Some of the scaly tribe, to whom fresh water is not less palatable than salt or brackish, may even go far inland; visit without “Guide” lakes hitherto undescribed by tourists, or follow, à la Bruce, the meanderings of some mighty river from the mouth up to its sources. Supported in a fluid of nearly the same specific gravity as themselves, the upper portion of the body throws no weight upon the lower, and weariness is impossible. Where there is no fatigue repose becomes unnecessary, and accordingly we find these denizens of the deep—like their “mobile mother,” the sea, “who rolls, and rolls, and rolls, and still goes rolling on”—are never perfectly at rest. When all the day has been passed in swimming, and the evening paddled out in sport, away float these everlasting voyagers in a luxurious hydrostatic bed, and are borne through the night wherever the current chances to carry them; and, with only an occasional instinctive gulping for a mouthful of air to replenish the exhausted swim-bladder, on they go till early dawn—bursting upon a pair of unprotected eye-balls, gives the owners thereof timely notice to descend deeper, and to strike out fins and tail in whatever direction waking thoughts may suggest. To such tourists Madame de Stael’s definition of travel—Le voyage, un triste plaisir—cannot, of course, apply. Their whole journey through life is indeed singularly placid, conducing to health, and extreme longevity; for though it be not absolutely true as affirmed by Aristotle, that fish have no diseases or “plagues,” it nevertheless is certain that large fish—adequately supplied with little ones for food, well armed, and capable of defending themselves against greater enemies—will live several centuries—a Nestorian age, to which immunity from sudden changes of temperature, as well as a secured sufficiency of wholesome diet, together with their well-known habit of taking things coolly, no doubt materially contribute. So long a period allowed for growth, and such a fine field too for development as the open sea affords, readily explain the enormous size reached by some fish of rapacity in their vast domains, and particularly by those ocean pirates, the dreaded and dreadful sharks; who, according to the authorities, though “overwhelmed with cruelty,” yet “come to no misfortune like other” fish; whose eyes swell with fatness; who do even as they list; growing up the terror of navigators and the scourge of the deep.
The ancients have left us many lively representations of the sanguinary proceedings of these ill-omened Squali, whose reign of terror, after four thousand years of historical renown, remains as firmly established over the waters as ever. In early times, several different species of sharks were confounded, and supposed identical; but as knowledge of the sea and its marine stores has increased, it is now ascertained beyond controversy that these cartilaginous monsters, all of whom are the same in daring and voracity, and terrible according to their size and strength, are of various species. Under the heading “Canicula,” Pliny relates, in his usual pleasant style, the proceedings of one of these, evidently our Tope, the Squalus milandra of the French, La Samiola of the Mediterranean; where, by the way, they still abound, to the terror and detriment alike of Italian and Maltese boatmen. Though this Canicula averages but twelve feet, he is equal to the gigantic white shark in cynopic impudence and rapacity; he has often been known to seize sailors standing beside their craft, and tardy bathers still in their shirts. The poor pearl divers of the Indian seas have particular reason to dread his approach; and the method anciently adopted by them to evade his jaws is very similar to what the black population of the East follow to the present day, and generally with complete success.
“The dyvers,” says Pliny, “that use to plunge down into the sea, are annoyed very much with a number of Sea-hounds that come about them, and put them in great jeopardie . . . . much ado they have and hard hold with these hound-fishes, for they lay at their bellies and loines, at their heeles, and snap at everie part of their bodies that they can perceive to be white. The onely way and remedie is to make head directly affront them, and to begin with them first, and so to terrifie them; for they are not so terrible to a man as they are as fraid of him againe. Thus within the deepe they be indifferently even matched; but, when the dyvers mount up and rise againe above water, then there is some odds betweene, and the man hath the disadvantage, and is in the most daunger, by reason that whiles he laboureth to get out of the water he faileth of meanes to encounter with the beast against the streame and sourges of the water, and therefore his only recource is to have helpe and aid from his fellowes in the ship; for having a cord tied at one end about his shoulders, he straineth it with his left hand to give signe of what daunger he is in, whiles he maintaineth fight with the right, by taking into it his puncheon with a sharp point, and so at the other end they draw him to them; and they need otherwise to pull and hale him in but softly; marry, when he is neere once to the ship, unless they give him a sodaine jerke, and snatch him up quickly, they may be sure to see him worried and devoured before their face; yea, and when he is at the point to be plucked up, and even now ready to go abourd, he is many times caught away out of his fellowes hands, if he bestir himself not the better, and put his own good will to the helpe of them within the ship, by plucking up his legges and gathering his body nimbly togither, round as it were in a ball. Well may some from shipbourd proke at the dogges aforesaid with forkes; others thrust at them with trout speares and such like weapons, and all never the neare; so crafty and cautelous is this foule beast, to get under the very belly of the bark, and so feed upon their comrade in safetie.”
The portraits of two other species besides the Canicula have been so well delineated by the ancients, as to render the recognition of the originals perfectly easy, and exempt from any possibility of mistake. One of these is the Saw-fish of modern writers, described by Aristotle under the name of Pristis, and by Pliny under the Latin synonym Serra. The saw, or rake, of this shark is at first a supple cartilaginous body, porrect from the eyes, and extending sometimes fifteen feet beyond them. In the earlier stages of development it is protected in a leathery sheath; but hardening gradually as the ossific deposition proceeds, its toothed sides at length pierce the tough integument; the Serra flings away the scabbard, and, after a very little practice, becomes a proficient in the use of his weapon, and always ready for instant assault upon any body or any thing that may or may not offer molestation. Thus formidably armed, and nothing daunted, the larger and fiercer the adversary the more ardently the Serra desires to join battle; above all, the destruction of the whale seems to occupy every thought, and to stimulate to valorous deeds; no sooner is one of these unwieldy monsters descried rolling through the billows, than our expert Sea-fencer rushes to the conflict; and, taking care to avoid the sweep of his opponent’s tremendous tail, soon effects his purpose, by stabbing the luckless leviathan at all points, till he—exhausted by loss of blood—dies at last anemic, like Seneca in the bath. Martyns relates a fight off the Shetland Isles, which he witnessed from a distance, not daring to approach the spot, while the factitious rain spouted up from the vents of the enraged sea mammal, poured down again in torrents sufficient to swamp a boat, over the liquid battle field. He watched them a long time as they feinted, skirmished, or made an onslaught; now wheeling off, but only to turn and renew the charge with double fury. Foul weather, however, coming on, he did not see the final result of the fray; but the sailors affirmed that such scenes were common enough to them, and generally ended in the death of the whale; that when he was in extremis, the victor would tear out and carry away the tongue—the only part he cared for—and that, on his departure, they themselves drew near, and enjoyed undisputed possession of the huge carcase.
The other well-defined Squalus of the ancients is the zygæna of Oppian, the Marseilles Jew-fish, the Balance-fish, the Hammer-fish, and were these not aliases enough already, the T-fish might be suggested as an appropriate synonym to add to the rest, the form of this letter suiting the outline of the fish to a tittle. The down stroke represents the body, and the horizontal bar at top the singular transverse head, at the opposite extremes of which two very salient, yellow eyes are situated, commanding from their position an extensive field of vision. When any thing occurs to ruffle the temper of the savage monster, these jaundiced eye-balls suddenly change to a blood-red hue, and roll, furiously glaring, in their projecting orbits; the portal of the mouth opens, and a huge, human tongue, swollen, inflamed, and papillated, surrounded by a whole armory of rending teeth, is thrust forth, presenting to view a creature so strange, hideous and malevolent, that nothing in nature can be compared to him. The domestic circle of the Squalus zygæna numbers every year twenty-four new members; this fearful fecundity of the mother is providentially kept in check by the violent decease of most of the young in cunabulis, for these little cacodemons, untaught by their parents or Dr. Watts to consider it at all “a shameful sight for Squali of one family to snarl, and snap, and bite,” commit the most cold-blooded fratricides, and even eat one another, proh pudor! without any remorse; besides this, when grown-up relations come on a visit, the young set are not secure from “battle, murder, and sudden death,” for a single moment, save when directly under the paternal nose; as a natural consequence, few of the nefarious brood survive childhood, or ever attain to full maturity of size and malice. Of such as escape infantine dangers, many in after life fall victims in hostile encounters with larger congeners; in particular with the white shark. The average length of the S. zygæna is only eight or nine feet, but he does not fear to confront the powerful Requin himself, and fight him, too, with such pluck, resolution, and fury, that though the greatly superior weight of the other at length prevails, the victor does not leave the bloody battle-field scatheless, but like a second Pyrrhus, with the conviction that one more such conquest would undo him. We never saw any of these sea-termagants alive and in action, and must therefore refer the reader for full particulars to M. Lacepède, who had that advantage; but to judge from sundry recently dead specimens, with fins down, tail at rest, the hammer head resting on the pavement, and one eye only to be seen at a time, she was quite ill-looking enough to justify belief in all that biographers have recorded against her.