64 FISHES I HAVE KNOWN 



stopped short, and, looking over the taffrail, said : 

 " Look ! There goes a Bay of Biscay shark ; 

 about the biggest I've ever seen ! I shouldn't 

 like to tumble overboard near that fellow ! " 



I followed his glance, and saw, not a basking 

 shark, or sun-fish, as it is erroneously called, but 

 the real thing, the squalus carcharias, or white 

 shark, with its tall triangular dorsal fin, its body 

 ash-colour above, whitish beneath, its eyes unmis- 

 takably cruel. As it rolled over — thirty feet long 

 it was — its terrible mouth seemed hungering for 

 prey. It was swimming lazily, just keeping up 

 with the ship alongside the quarter. The breeze 

 freshened, and we left him behind, but I met many 

 of his kith and kin later on in other latitudes. 



Captain Jones told me that in the old days 

 a line-of-battle ship was wrecked off the north 

 coast of Spain, and that many of the crew, in 

 trying to swim ashore, were devoured by sharks 

 near Cape Finisterre. 



When we reached the tropics, small-pox and 

 dysentery broke out amongst the steerage pas- 

 sengers, who were chiefly poor people from 

 Glasgow and Edinburgh, whose insanitary habits 

 and oatmeal dietary rendered them — especially 

 the children — peculiarly liable to the latter illness. 

 They died off so rapidly that almost ever)- day 



