70 Man Against Shark 



load that water poured in through two small holes in the sternboard, where 

 a bumper formerly had been secured. Not a stick or a plug of any kind was in 

 the boat. I couldn't let that great catch go to the bottom, though, so I did what 

 that boy at the dike did, only more so. I stuck my two thumbs into the holes. 

 We made it to shore safely. 



Our catch weighed 9,985 pounds. 



Nantucket, Massachusetts 



Captain Ernie Schuetz and I are catching about 350 sharks a month, right 

 off this summer colony where people are swimming without realizing that 

 thousands of sharks are swimming here, too. These sharks aren't after bathers, 

 though. Not as long as there are great schools of menhaden about. 



And most of the sharks we are catching are not dangerous. Because I knew 

 this, I got careless the other day. You should never get careless around sharks, 

 even the "harmless" ones. 



We had caught an 8-foot Sand shark on a hand line. The Sand shark isn't 

 exactly harmless, but it isn't exactly ferocious, either. You just have to be 

 watchful when you handle one. And I wasn't. 



When we brought him alongside the boat, I clubbed him across the snout 

 and swung him inboard with the block and tackle. He dropped down on the 

 deck, apparently dead. (That blow on the snout does it— usually.) I wanted to 

 move him forward a bit because he was in the way of the wheel. I started 

 tugging him by his head while Ernie pushed him from the back. Suddenly, the 

 shark gave a convulsive flop. His jaws yawned open and, somehow, he seemed 

 to lunge forward. I leaped backward, lost my balance and fell. As I lay there, 

 stunned on the deck, I could see the sky spinning above me, for I was fiat on 

 my back, and I could feel the shark's jaws slowly closing on my left leg. 



I sat up. I just froze there, watching the shark's upper jaw descend over my 

 leg like a jagged curtain. 



At that moment, the shark died. Only the pinpoints of his teeth penetrated 

 my skin. I was covered with cold sweat, and as I looked at my leg with its dim 

 crescent of tiny pricks, I could hardly believe it was still intact. 



Everything had happened in only a few seconds. Ernie was already prying 

 the shark's jaws apart and gently lifting my leg from the maw. 



Shark bites were no novelty to Captain Ernie. He told me once about the 

 time he was working a ship out of Nassau. The Una, a small Bahamas steamer 

 bound for her home port at Turks Island, hit a coral reef. 



"She had about 75 laborers aboard," Ernie recalled, "and when that little 

 ship hit the reef, there wasn't much time for many of them to get into the life- 

 boats, or even on the life-rafts. Lots of them— God only knows how many— were 

 dumped into the water and kept afloat by grabbing at whatever bobbed by. 



"There wasn't much panic, though. That is, not until one of the passengers 

 on a raft tumbled off and disappeared. Just one word was all he yelled: Shark! 



"All of a sudden, the sea was alive with those monsters from hell! They 

 smashed into the rafts, overturning them and throwing screaming men into the 

 sea. One of them even half-leaped out of the water and pulled a man right off 

 a raft. 



