Jack in the Atolls. 
73 
Perhaps you may only see one or two at first, 
swimming to and fro at a few fathoms’ depth ; 
in ten minutes you may see fifty ! and they 
are all hungry. A bad short time would a 
man have did he fall overboard at night. In 
daylight the natives know no fear of Jack, 
but they do not like getting capsized in the 
darkness; and the darker the night the more 
danger. And even when he is young, and not 
a fathom long from his nose to his tail, Jack 
can snap off the arm of a full-grown man as 
easily as a man can swallow an oyster. 
So, there being plenty of sharks, the Ellice, 
Gilbert, or Marshall islander is resigned to the 
poverty of his island soil, catches his shark, 
and is thankful. For he sells Jack’s fins and 
tail to the trader for tobacco, calico, guns, 
ammunition, and gin—when gin can be bought; 
and his wife, when she meets her brown-skinned 
lord and master on the beach as he returns 
from fishing, looks anxiously into the blood¬ 
stained canoe to see how many kapakau (fins) 
he has taken. Two or three dozen or so, 
when dried, may mean that lovely hat trimmed 
with violent green ribbon on a bilious red and 
yellow ground that the trader showed her one 
