The Biography of a Man-Eater 



nearly all animals feed at night in this land of plenty. 

 In all his wanderings the man-eater never exhibited 

 any interest in a certain locality ; he never returned to 

 the same place twice. He had no sense of location, 

 no mental action that gave him an interest in any 

 part of the reef sufficient to produce a desire to 

 return, no memory beyond that which blood pro- 

 duced. He slept or rested when he grew weary, and 

 often swam continuously for days; at times at the 

 surface, when his fin would make broad showing 

 above the water, cutting it like a knife. He swam 

 on, eternally on, but generally in a circle an instinc- 

 tive movement, which kept him near the lagoon. 



At the end of three years the man-eater was six 

 feet in length. He had increased prodigiously in 

 bulk, was especially heavy just behind the head which 

 was enormous and threatening. When his jaws 

 gaped, as they sometimes did to throw out some para- 

 site, an array of teeth would be seen, the front row 

 upright, pure white, larger than a man's thumb-nail 

 and perfect triangles, their edges like saws. Back 

 of these were ten or twelve rows of similar teeth 

 lying flat in the mouth, unsuspected, but called into 

 action when blood was tasted and some victim 

 attempted to escape; then all these fierce knives 

 sprang erect and sank into the flesh of the enemy 

 making escape impossible. 



The shark had changed in many essentials. He 

 was lighter in color, nearly white beneath; the upper 



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