Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

Fantasy Football Challenge - Library of Books for Football Fanatics

Fantasy Football Challenge presents
My Tropic Isle

53 of 70

out of the four bullets the magazine contained penetrated its body just abaft the pectoral fins. A brief flurry followed each shot, and then the shark, with passive fixity of purpose, resumed the mangling of the ray, which with extended, backward strained eyes, seemed to implore rescue from its fate. Were any other means of response to so tragic an appeal available? The crowbar! Hastily made fast to the stern line, it was hurled harpoon-like with energy sufficient to batter in the forehead of a bullock. But the listless implement bounced off the head of the shark as a stick from a drum, provoking merely a contemptuous wave of the tail which seemed to signify a sneer. The axe was also employed with negative results, for the difficulty of delivering an effective blow from the boat could not be overcome. All the sea about became ruddy, and the lust for still more of the shark's blood being imperative, we returned to the beach, obtained a fresh supply of ammunition, and a whale harpoon. In the meantime the blood previously shed had spread far and wide, and instead of a solitary gormandising shark a full half-dozen rollicked and revelled in the stained area, all alike in size and alike, too, in absolute indifference to the boat. Owing to the featherweight heft the harpoon failed in penetrative force, and with the first tug invariably withdrew. Frequently the sharks came within arm's length of the boat, and though neither ammunition nor the bumps of the homely crowbar nor the pin-pricks of the harpoon were spared, nor shouts of exultation when an individual lashed out under the sting of a bullet, not a shark was in the least perturbed. They romped about the boat, if not defiant at least heedless of all the clamour and puny assaults, appearing to challenge to combat in their natural element. The temper of the school was such that, no doubt, all the occupants of the boat would have been accounted for had they by some foolish miracle squandered themselves in the blood-stained sea. By this time the shark which had first attracted attention had disappeared with its prey, distressed and unseaworthy on account of several leaks; and the others followed one by one, and not altogether in the best condition imaginable, judging by the oily bubbles and tinges beyond the limits of the bay. On a quieter day I swam off to the anchored boat for some forgotten purpose, which accomplished I prepared to slip off the stern when a dark-coloured shark intervened, moving steadily along parallel to the beach. Giving it precedence, I swam ashore without resting and watched the big fish slide like a shadow up into the corner of the bay, where it rested. Tom, the sport-loving black boy, being on the scene, his flattie was soon afloat, and with a disdainful thrust of the harpoon he impaled the creature, which did not exhibit the least sign of life. Hauled to the surface, Tom declared it to be dead--that it had died from natural causes ere the harpoon had touched it. Had ever shark taken quieter exit from this hustling world! It was about six feet long and fairly robust, and while being towed ashore wallowed helplessly, floating belly up and submitting without a spasm of protest to nudges and slaps of the oars and prods with the heft of the harpoon, but no sooner did it touch the sand and its snout shoot into the foreign element than a furious fight for life began. Did ever shark display such agility! Wriggling and lashing with its tail, almost had it swept me off my feet and dragged me into the sea; but Tom came to my aid, with a sudden and judiciously timed tug as it swerved, the game was landed, to continue extraordinary antics on the sand, though Tom was armed with a tomahawk. When the struggles had ceased post-mortem examination was made. The stomach was empty, but the liver promised so much oil that Tom extirpated it and all other internal organs, and not until mutilation was complete was any peculiarity about the jaws and teeth noticed. These subsequently, proved that we had captured, not a shark but a ray--Forskal's shovel-nosed ray (RHYNCHOBATUS DJIDDENSIS), which Tom, for all his knowledge of sea things, had never before seen. Curiously examining the jaws, he laid a rude forefinger on the tesselated plate which stands in the species for teeth, and the disorganised remains, true to the ruling passion, crunched, and Tom ruefully consoled the finger for a fortnight. Hitherto his opinion, founded on contemporary experience and the traditions of his race, had been that a shark would never fight a live man. Was it not the refinement of irony that he should well nigh be deprived of the best part of a finger by a dead ray masquerading as a shark! Many blacks refuse to eat shark because of totemic restrictions; but where no tribal contrary law prevails, several of the species are cooked and eaten without ceremony, but with most objectionable after effects to those who are not partial to such fare. The specific odour of the shark seems to be intensified and to be made almost as clinging as that of musk, being far more expressive than the exhalation of a camp gorged with green turtle. Discreet persons encounter such a scene as the do the jade Care--by passing on the windy side. CHAPTER XXIII THE RECLUSE OF RATTLESNAKE "Live forgotten and die forlorn." TENNYSON. Am I, living in or rather off the land of magnificent distances, entitled to claim as a neighbour a friend one hundred miles away? Sentiments obliterate space. With the lonesome individual who dwelt in an oven-like hut of corrugated iron on rocky, sunburnt Rattlesnake Island, and who lost the habit of living a few years ago, I was on social terms--terms of vague but cosy intimacy. On occasions of our rare meetings we found ideas in common. Peradventure similarities of environment focussed similar thoughts. Perhaps abnormal temperaments gave rise to becoming tenderness and sympathy. Whatsoever and howsoever the mutual sentiment, it is of the past. The history of the Recluse of that undesirable island, a mass of granite and thin, unkindly soil is far removed from the prosaic. His was the third life sacrificed because of the lust of man to own the unromantic spot. He came to be known as "The Recluse of Rattlesnake," but the pain

53 of 70 pages. Go to page:

Go to this Book's Directory Page