At length our prey was well secured, and we stood about him in triumph. It was a shark, measuring five feet and three inches in length, and he must certainly have weighed nearly a hundred pounds.
From the study Mr Clare made of the subject, we found that the name by which the shark is technically known is Squalidae, which includes a large family fitly designated, as your Latin dictionary will prove when you find the adjective squalidus—“filthy, slovenly, loathsome.” It is a family of many species, there being some thirty or forty cousins; and the different forms of the teeth, snout, mouth, lips, and tail-fins, the existence or absence of eyelids, spiracles, (those are the apertures by which the water taken in for respiration is thrown out again), the situation of the different fins, etcetera, distinguish the different divisions of the common family. The cousin who, wandering about that stormy Saturday, had frightened away the bass, and finally astonished himself by swallowing a fish-hook when he only thought to suck a dainty bit of his family’s favourite delicacy, was known as the Zygaena—so Mr Clare introduced him to us when his sharkship had grown so exceedingly diffident as not to be able to say one word for himself—a genus distinguished by having the sides of the head greatly prolonged in a horizontal direction, from which circumstance they are commonly known as the hammer-headed sharks.
His teeth were in three rows, the points of the teeth being directed towards the corners of the mouth. The two back rows were bent down, and only intended, Mr Clare told us, to replace the foremost when injured. These horrible teeth were notched like a saw.
I think the face, if so you might call it, of that piratical fish wore the most fearfully cruel and rapacious expression I had ever seen. That Zygaena family of the Squalidae, (I think they sound more horribly devilish when called by their classical titles), is one dangerous to man, and it is very rare that a man-eating or man-biting shark is ever found on the English coast.
I proposed to cut him open, and so we did. Among the half-digested food, most of which was fish, I found something that at first looked like a leather strap. I seized it and pulled it out. Surely there was a buckle. I washed and laid it out on the rock, while we all gathered about in great excitement to make out what our dead enemy had been preying on. There was no longer a doubt that it was a dog-collar—the collar of a medium-sized dog, perhaps a spaniel or terrier. There was a plate on it, which, with a little rubbing, we made to read, “David Atherton, Newcastle.” How very strange! Had the little fellow been washed overboard from some vessel? or had he swum off some neighbouring beach to bring a stick for his master?
We could never discover any antecedents of any kind whatever to that mysterious sequel to “The Romance of the Poor Young Dog.” Was there a fond master mourning for him in Newcastle, England, or in Newcastle, Pennsylvania? Alas, poor dog! thou wert hastily snatched from this world—the ocean thy grave and a shark’s belly thy coffin. Thy collar hangs, as I write this, over my study table, and many a time has my old Ponto sniffed at that relic of a fellow-dog, and his eyes grown moist as I repeated to him my surmises of the sad fate of David Atherton’s companion.
Mr Clare told us a good deal about sharks. Of the many varieties, the most hideous is the Wolf-fish, (Anarrhicas lupus). Though much smaller than the white shark, he is a very formidable creature. He has six rows of grinders in each jaw, excellently adapted for bruising the crabs, lobsters, scallops, and large whelks, which the voracious animal grinds to pieces, and swallows along with the shells. When caught, it fastens with indiscriminate rage upon anything within its reach, fights desperately, even when out of the water, and inflicts severe wounds if not avoided cautiously. Schönfeld relates this wolf-fish will seize on an anchor and leave the marks of its teeth in it, and Steller mentions one on the coast of Kamschatka, which he saw lay hold of a cutlass, with which a man was attempting to kill it, and break it to bits as if it had been made of glass. This monster is, from its great size, one of the most formidable denizens of the ocean; in the British waters it attains the length of six or seven feet, and is said to be much larger in the more Northern seas. It usually frequents the deep parts of the sea, but comes among the marine plants of the coast in spring, to deposit its spawn. It swims rather slowly, and glides along with somewhat of the motion of an eel.
The white shark is far more dreadful, from its gigantic size and strength; its jaws are also furnished with from three to six rows of strong, flat, triangular, sharp-pointed, and finely serrated teeth, which it can raise or depress at will.
This brute grows to a length of thirty feet, and its strength may be imagined from the fact that a young shark, only six feet long, has been known to break a man’s leg by a stroke of its tail. Therefore, when sailors have caught a shark at sea, with a baited hook, the first thing they do when it is drawn upon deck is to chop off its tail, to prevent the mischief to be dreaded from its immense strength.
Hughes, the author of the “Natural History of Barbadoes,” relates an anecdote which gives a good idea of the nature of this monster: “In the reign of Queen Anne a merchant ship from England arrived at Barbadoes; some of the crew, ignorant of the danger of doing so, were bathing in the sea, when a large shark suddenly appeared swimming directly towards them. All hurried on board, and escaped, except one unfortunate fellow, who was bit in two by the shark. A comrade and friend of the man, seeing the severed body of his companion, vowed instant revenge. The voracious shark was seen swimming about in search of the rest of his prey, when the brave lad leaped into the water. He carried in his hand a long, sharp-pointed knife, and the fierce monster pushed furiously towards him. Already he had turned over, and opened his huge, deadly jaws, when the youth, diving cleverly, seized the shark somewhere near the fins with his left hand, and stabbed him several times in the belly. The creature, mad with pain and streaming with blood, attempted vainly to escape. The crews of the ships near saw that the fight was over, but knew not which was slain, till, as the shark became exhausted, he rose nearer the shore, and the gallant assailant still continuing his efforts, was able, with assistance, to drag him on shore. There he ripped open the stomach of the shark and took from it the half of his friend’s body, which he then buried together with the trunk half.”