CHAPTER V 



THE BIOGRAPHY OF A MAN-EATER* 



IT was down on the Pagos reef, where the green 

 melts suddenly into seas of turquoise, that the 

 man-eater first saw light. He was born amid 

 scenes of blood and sudden death; ushered into the 

 world amid pitiless attack, and saved, of all the hell- 

 ish brood, by the swirl of waters, the uplifted sand 

 cloud, caused by savage kinsmen in their ruthless 

 charge and cannibalistic feast. 



His first act was a drama in the struggle for exist- 

 ence. There was no one to teach him how to swim, 

 to breathe, to see, and instinct, that inheritance of the 

 ages, bade him lie limp and motionless. Being of 

 the same color as the sandy bottom, a livid tawny 

 gray, he crouched, and was buried by the shroud of 

 falling particles as they sifted down through the 

 green and opalescent water. 



He was about one foot in length, lank, pliable, soft 

 and tender. He did not have a bone in his body, 

 indeed never had ; he was an embryo killing machine 



* This article in its entirety is fiction, a study of the man-eater; yet every inci- 

 dent is based on my observations of sharks covering many years, and I give it as a 

 possible history of a typical shark of the open sea. 



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