Chapter XXIII
The north-west trade carried us almost into the south-east trade, and
then left us for several days to roll and swelter in the doldrums.
During this time I have discovered that I have a genius for
rifle-shooting. Mr. Pike swore I must have had long practice; and I
confess I was myself startled by the ease of the thing. Of course, it’s
the knack; but one must be so made, I suppose, in order to be able to
acquire the knack.
By the end of half an hour, standing on the heaving deck and shooting at
bottles floating on the rolling swell, I found that I broke each bottle
at the first shot. The supply of empty bottles giving out, Mr. Pike was
so interested that he had the carpenter saw me a lot of small square
blocks of hard wood. These were more satisfactory. A well-aimed shot
threw them out of the water and spinning into the air, and I could use a
single block until it had drifted out of range. In an hour’s time I
could, shooting quickly and at short range, empty my magazine at a block
and hit it nine times, and, on occasion, ten times, out of eleven.
I might not have judged my aptitude as unusual, had I not induced Miss
West and Wada to try their hands. Neither had luck like mine. I finally
persuaded Mr. Pike, and he went behind the wheel-house so that none of
the crew might see how poor a shot he was. He was never able to hit the
mark, and was guilty of the most ludicrous misses.
“I never could get the hang of rifle-shooting,” he announced disgustedly,
“but when it comes to close range with a gat I’m right there. I guess I
might as well overhaul mine and limber it up.”
He went below and came back with a huge ’44 automatic pistol and a
handful of loaded clips.
“Anywhere from right against the body up to ten or twelve feet away,
holding for the stomach, it’s astonishing, Mr. Pathurst, what you can do
with a weapon like this. Now you can’t use a rifle in a mix-up. I’ve
been down and under, with a bunch giving me the boot, when I turned loose
with this. Talk about damage! It ranged them the full length of their
bodies. One of them’d just landed his brogans on my face when I let’m
have it. The bullet entered just above his knee, smashed the collarbone,
where it came out, and then clipped off an ear. I guess that bullet’s
still going. It took more than a full-sized man to stop it. So I say,
give me a good handy gat when something’s doing.”
“Ain’t you afraid you’ll use all your ammunition up?” he asked anxiously
half an hour later, as I continued to crack away with my new toy.
He was quite reassured when I told him Wada had brought along fifty
thousand rounds for me.
In the midst of the shooting, two sharks came swimming around. They were
quite large, Mr. Pike said, and he estimated their length at fifteen
feet. It was Sunday morning, so that the crew, except for working the
ship, had its time to itself, and soon the carpenter, with a rope for a
fish-line and a great iron hook baited with a chunk of salt pork the size
of my head, captured first one, and then the other, of the monsters. They
were hoisted in on the main deck. And then I saw a spectacle of the
cruelty of the sea.
The full crew gathered about with sheath knives, hatchets, clubs, and big
butcher knives borrowed from the galley. I shall not give the details,
save that they gloated and lusted, and roared and bellowed their delight
in the atrocities they committed. Finally, the first of the two fish was
thrown back into the ocean with a pointed stake thrust into its upper and
lower jaws so that it could not close its mouth. Inevitable and
prolonged starvation was the fate thus meted out to it.
“I’ll show you something, boys,” Andy Fay cried, as they prepared to
handle the second shark.
The Maltese Cockney had been a most capable master of ceremonies with the
first one. More than anything else, I think, was I hardened against
these brutes by what I saw them do. In the end, the maltreated fish
thrashed about the deck entirely eviscerated. Nothing remained but the
mere flesh-shell of the creature, yet it would not die. It was amazing
the life that lingered when all the vital organs were gone. But more
amazing things were to follow.
Mulligan Jacobs, his arms a butcher’s to the elbows, without as much as
“by your leave,” suddenly thrust a hunk of meat into my hand. I sprang
back, startled, and dropped it to the deck, while a gleeful howl went up
from the two-score men. I was shamed, despite myself. These brutes held
me in little respect; and, after all, human nature is so strange a
compound that even a philosopher dislikes being held in disesteem by the
brutes of his own species.
I looked at what I had dropped. It was the heart of the shark, and as I
looked, there under my eyes, on the scorching deck where the pitch oozed
from the seams, the heart pulsed with life.
And I dared. I would not permit these animals to laugh at any
fastidiousness of mine. I stooped and picked up the heart, and while I
concealed and conquered my qualms I held it in my hand and felt it beat
in my hand.
At any rate, I had won a mild victory over Mulligan Jacobs; for he
abandoned me for the more delectable diversion of torturing the shark
that would not die. For several minutes it had been lying quite
motionless. Mulligan Jacobs smote it a heavy blow on the nose with the
flat of a hatchet, and as the thing galvanized into life and flung its
body about the deck the little venomous man screamed in ecstasy:
“The hooks are in it!–the hooks are in it!–and burnin’ hot!”
He squirmed and writhed with fiendish delight, and again he struck it on
the nose and made it leap.
This was too much, and I beat a retreat–feigning boredom, or cessation
of interest, of course; and absently carrying the still throbbing heart
in my hand.
As I came upon the poop I saw Miss West, with her sewing basket, emerging
from the port door of the chart-house. The deck-chairs were on that
side, so I stole around on the starboard side of the chart-house in order
to fling overboard unobserved the dreadful thing I carried. But, drying
on the surface in the tropic heat and still pulsing inside, it stuck to
my hand, so that it was a bad cast. Instead of clearing the railing, it
struck on the pin-rail and stuck there in the shade, and as I opened the
door to go below and wash my hands, with a last glance I saw it pulse
where it had fallen.
When I came back it was still pulsing. I heard a splash overside from
the waist of the ship, and knew the carcass had been flung overboard. I
did not go around the chart-house and join Miss West, but stood
enthralled by the spectacle of that heart that beat in the tropic heat.
Boisterous shouts from the sailors attracted my attention. They had all
climbed to the top of the tall rail and were watching something outboard.
I followed their gaze and saw the amazing thing. That long-eviscerated
shark was not dead. It moved, it swam, it thrashed about, and ever it
strove to escape from the surface of the ocean. Sometimes it swam down
as deep as fifty or a hundred feet, and then, still struggling to escape
the surface, struggled involuntarily to the surface. Each failure thus
to escape fetched wild laughter from the men. But why did they laugh?
The thing was sublime, horrible, but it was not humorous. I leave it to
you. What is there laughable in the sight of a pain-distraught fish
rolling helplessly on the surface of the sea and exposing to the sun all
its essential emptiness?
I was turning away, when renewed shouting drew my gaze. Half a dozen
other sharks had appeared, smaller ones, nine or ten feet long. They
attacked their helpless comrade. They tore him to pieces they destroyed
him, devoured him. I saw the last shred of him disappear down their
maws. He was gone, disintegrated, entombed in the living bodies of his
kind, and already entering into the processes of digestion. And yet,
there, in the shade on the pin-rail, that unbelievable and monstrous
heart beat on.
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