The Biography of a Man-Eater 



All this time the man-eater had remained in one 

 general section, not straying beyond a radius of five 

 miles, but as years passed he became a wanderer, and 

 when about fifteen feet, or more, in length, like a 

 very ghost compared to the nurse sharks he once slept 

 near in the lagoon, he left shallow water and took 

 to the open sea. It was about this period that the 

 shark became a public character. He began to swim 

 up and down the reef taking as his route that of 

 many of the coast steamers, ranging from about the 

 latitude of Charleston to Key West, at times cross- 

 ing the Gulf Stream. 



It is not to be supposed that he had gained any 

 idea of locality. He haunted this region merely 

 because he had certain limitations. He swam north 

 until the water lost the temperature which suited his 

 nature best, and to the south until it grew too warm. 

 A certain skipper of a steamer which sailed from a 

 northern port sighted the shark early in 1861 off 

 Gary's Foot Light, the shark following the steamer 

 for several hours, his dorsal fin high above water, 

 crossing and recrossing the steamer's wake in a pecu- 

 liarly rapid manner. For three consecutive trips the 

 shark was observed, and then one of the passengers 

 fired at him cutting a notch out of his dorsal fin, by 

 which the shark was known for years, nearly always 

 being sighted in the run from Cape Florida to 

 Havana. The shark was named " Old Bill," and 

 there was not a superstitious sailor on the run who 



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