TOPE AKD OTHEE LEAPING SHAEKS 



men took the line and dragged the big fish up an incline onto a 

 little dam. Here I cut out the hook, and we pushed the monster, 

 that had a mouth that would have taken me in, shoulders and 

 aJl, into the moat or ditch that surrounded the fort. The shark 

 lived several months, but it never was tamed in the accepted 

 sense, though it would drag about boats, and submitted to 

 several indignities of the kind, and with the dogged pertinacity 

 of certain suffragettes I recall in England, refused all food, that 

 we could see, though no ' pet ' ever had more attention or a 

 better prison. 



There is a remarkable difference between the sharks I took 

 on the Florida reef, from the St. Johns to Key West, and those 

 of California. The warm hot water of the Tropics give them 

 size and extraordinary bulk, and a fourteen-foot Gulf of Mexico 

 shark was, in my experience, always in girth that of a large horse 

 or similar size ; while in the waters of Santa CataUna the sharks 

 are aU long and slender. A hammerhead of ten or twelve feet 

 might not weigh over two or three hundred pounds. There is 

 something repellent about the big shark, especially as you see 

 him in the water ; and the sailor never allows one to escape 

 if he can prevent it. Yet, I can recall the time, when living 

 in a shark country, that we had absolutely no fear of them, 

 swam the channels ad libitum, a feat that to-day I would not 

 consider for a moment. In fact, with no special reason, I have 

 developed, a mortal fear of sharks, a singular physiological 

 feature, as I have often swam a channel that I not only knew 

 abounded in sharks, but I could see their fins not one hundred 

 feet away. 



The California hammerhead is a good hard fighter, when 

 hungry apparently without fear, and will deliberately steal fish 

 hanging from boats. For that matter I have seen a thirteen- 

 foot Florida shark take a fish from my line just as I was Ufting 

 it in ; and all persistent tarpon anglers can relate tales of big 

 sharks which have followed the stricken tarpon to its death. To 

 illustrate briefly the strength of a ten-foot CataJina hammer- 



69 



