Читать книгу Those Other Animals - G. A. Henty - Страница 9

Table of Contents

PHILOSOPHERS, although as a rule men of exceedingly positive opinions, wholly averse to confess their ignorance upon any point whatever, have failed signally in arriving at any satisfactory conclusion as to the advantage of the shark in the general scheme of nature. It has been suggested that it was created specially for the repression of conceit in man, and to show him that he was not, as he might otherwise have supposed, the undoubted lord of the inhabitants of the water as of the dwellers upon earth. Given special advantages—such as that of holding the end of a stout rope, at the other extremity of which is a hook fixed in a shark’s mouth—man may, with the assistance of a number of his fellows, have the best of the shark. But alone, and in the water, the advantage is wholly and absolutely the other way, and the strongest swimmer and the bravest heart fail when the tyrant of the sea seeks to make his acquaintance. It is true that reports have been current that there are natives of the islands of Southern Seas, who, armed with a knife, fear not to go out and give battle to the shark in its own element, but these tales must be accepted with caution, and are akin to the many apparently authentic narratives of the appearance of the sea-serpent.

The shark is a creature gifted with great strength, a savage temper, dogged perseverance, and exceptional power of jaw. The lion and tiger may mangle, the crocodile may lacerate, the bulldog may hold fast—the shark alone of living creatures possesses the power of cleanly nipping off a human limb at a bite. One ill service nature has done the shark, namely, that of placing a triangular fin on his back, which acts as a danger signal and gives warning of his approach. Happily the shark has not been gifted with sufficient sagacity to be aware of this peculiarity, for had he been so he would unquestionably have abandoned his habit of swimming close to the surface of the water, and would in that case have been enabled to approach his victim unobserved. The shark is a slow swimmer for his size and strength. Byron observes, “As darts the dolphin from the shark,” but Byron was a poet, and does not appear to have been a close observer of the habits of the inhabitants of the water; or he would have known that a shark would have no more chance of catching a dolphin than a sheep would of overhauling a hare. A shark will keep up with a sailing ship, but it is as much as it can do to follow in the wake of a fast steamer, and a torpedo boat would be able to give it points.

As it is a source of wonder how the flea manages to exist in the sand, where his chances of obtaining a meal may not occur once in a lifetime, so naturalists are greatly puzzled how the shark maintains himself. The ocean is wide, and the number of men who fall overboard small indeed in comparison to its area. The vast proportion of sharks, then, must go through their lives without a remote chance of obtaining a meal at the expense of the human kind. There is no ground for the supposition that the shark can exist upon air. He is not, like the whale, provided with an apparatus that enables him to sweep up the tiny inhabitants of the seas. He is too slow in swimming, and infinitely too slow in turning, to catch any fish that did not deliberately swim into his mouth; and unless we suppose that, as is said of the snake, he exercises a magnetic influence over fish, and causes them to rush headlong to destruction between his jaws, it is impossible to imagine how he obtains a sufficient supply of food for his sustenance. As it would appear that it is only when he gets the good luck to light upon a dead or badly injured fish that the shark has ever the opportunity of making a really square meal, his prolonged fasts certainly furnish an ample explanation and excuse for his alleged savagery of disposition.

The scientific name of sharks is squalidæ, though why scientific men should have fixed upon such a title is not clear, for there is to the ordinary eye nothing particularly ragged or squalid about the shark’s appearance. The shark belongs to the same section as the ray, which fish, however, resembles its cousin the shark only in the awkward position of its mouth, and in its astonishing power of biting, it being able to indent an iron boat-hook or bar. The immemorial enmity between man and the snake on land is not less bitter and deep-seated than that which man on the sea cherishes against the shark. In this case, however, it is one-sided, everything pointing to the fact that so far from having any hostile feeling for man, the shark has an excessive liking for him. It is as unjust to charge the shark with hostility towards man as it would be to accuse man of a savage animosity against the ox or the sheep. To the shark man is food to be eaten, that is all; and man, the almost universal devourer, is the last who is entitled to blame the shark on this ground. The Maori has always been regarded as a remarkably fine specimen of a savage, and his liking for “missionary” has never been seriously imputed to him as a grave failing. Man’s likes and dislikes are unfortunately sadly tinged with selfishness. Many men go to sea, and therefore the man-eating propensities of the shark excite in us a feeling of indignation. The proportion of men who went out as missionaries to the Maori was so small as to be altogether inappreciable, and the majority therefore regarded the weakness of the Maori for them from a purely philosophical point of view.

Fortunately for the inhabitants of these islands, the aversion of the shark to cold water is as much marked as is that of the occupants of the casual wards of our workhouses; and the consequence is that the larger and more dangerous species are very seldom met with on our coasts, and upon the rare occasions when they visit us, are in so low and depressed a state of mind from the cold that their appetites appear to be wholly in abeyance, and there is no record of a bather having been devoured at any of our sea-side watering places.

The eye of the shark is small, long, and narrow, closely resembling that of a pig. All observers have agreed in attributing to it a sly and malicious expression, but this must to some extent be taken as a flight of fancy. The only real reason for attributing to the shark a savage disposition is that, like the wolf, it has no pity whatever for a comrade in distress, and a wounded shark will be instantly attacked and devoured by its companions. This is, indeed, an evil trait in the creature, and can be excused only on the ground of its prolonged fasts, and the overmastering demands of its appetite.

The shark, like the elephant, is of a timid disposition, and is cautious and wary in its approaches. All observers are agreed that it is always attended by two pilot fishes, who act the same part as that wrongly assigned to the jackal in reference to the lion—going on ahead to examine any likely object, and returning to inform the shark whether it is of an eatable nature. The splashing of oars, or even of the arms and legs of a swimmer, will often deter the shark from making an attack, and there is every reason to believe that if swimmers in tropical waters would always carry with them three or four hand grenades, they would have little occasion to fear interference from him. It is strange that so obvious a precaution should be generally neglected. The inability of the shark to seize its victim without turning itself first upon its back must be a serious inconvenience to it, and a swimmer with sufficient presence of mind to await its coming, and then when it turns to dive suddenly under it, can baffle the rush of a shark, just as a man can avoid the charge of an enraged bull by coolness and activity. Man’s aversion to the shark here stands greatly in his way, few swimmers when attacked possessing sufficient coolness and presence of mind to carry the manœuvre into successful effect, although many possess nerve enough to await without flinching the onset of the most formidable of terrestrial animals. Did we know more of the domestic habits of the shark, and learn to appreciate the virtues that he probably possesses, there can be little doubt that the unreasoning aversion felt towards him would be largely mitigated, and we should come to make due allowance for the pressure of hunger that at times operates to our own disadvantage.