The Biography of a Man-Eater 



against the blue, then in a moment of horror realized 

 that he was too late. 



The white shark with the notched fin was noticed 

 at Aspinwall several months where desperate efforts 

 were made to capture him, then he attached himself to 

 a northbound steamer and followed her through the 

 Strait of Florida, by Cuba, up the Bahama Banks, 

 leaving her by a singular fatality where he was born, 

 near Gary's Foot Light on the Florida coast. Here 

 he was attracted by a fleet of wreckers. He lingered 

 here a few weeks, then dogged a tramp steamer to 

 Bermuda, and one day went to sea on the trail of a 

 British cruiser. But she was only going out for gun 

 practice, and as the huge sullen brute came boldly to 

 the surface and circled about the vessel, glaring at her 

 with his beadlike eyes, the big lateenlike dorsal cut- 

 ting the water, one of the men asked permission to 

 fire at him, and cleverly sent a ball through his gills. 



Then came the culmination in the career of this 

 insatiate monster, wounded to the death, but so in- 

 sensible to injury that the scent of his own life blood 

 reached his brain before the sense of pain, his first 

 move being not alarm, but desire. Frenzied by the 

 lust for blood, rapine and slaughter, the man-eater 

 turned and dashed through the deep red cloud, and 

 was rushing savagely from side to side in search of 

 himself, when a second shot cut the soft spinal mar- 

 row. The great mass dropped inert. For the first 

 time the powerful tail did not respond ; the huge lips 



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