The Biography of a Man-Eater 



of color lavender, blue and pink all were unseen 

 by this incarnate appetite without sensation or desire 

 beyond carnage. 



Swimming aimlessly along one day, the shark 

 crossed a familiar scent. Several Mother Gary's 

 chickens were fluttering over the surface after some 

 substance foreign to the clear waters. At once the 

 great bulk shot into action. It rushed across the line, 

 caught the scent, lost it, turned savagely and caught 

 it again, then dashed on into the wake of a great ship 

 bound for Rio. For days he followed, now astern, 

 again lurching along the quarter with one ugly eye 

 cast upward; again sailing along the surface, his big 

 dorsal fin cutting the water. He was fired at ; hooks 

 were tossed over baited with salt pork, but the man- 

 eater paid no attention to them. He crossed the line 

 with the ship, grew gaunt and ugly, and was forced 

 to catch a porpoise or starve, so well did the wind 

 hold, and finally entered the harbor at Rio and failed 

 miserably in an attempt to capsize the boat of a pilot. 



Meeting an outgoing steamer, the man-eater trailed 

 it up the coast to Barbadoes. Here he found a small 

 sailing vessel bound to the westward, and so reached 

 Aspinwall in the Caribbean Sea. The water was 

 intensely hot and he lay out in deep water, cooling his 

 massive bulk, during the day, going inshore at night, 

 occasionally chasing the great rays whose leap from 

 and return to the water sounded like the discharge 

 of a cannon. 



