Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/76

66 caught, was twenty feet long. "Our ship was at anchor, and I was holding a line over the side, when the rope began to quiver. I felt that I had hooked a large fish, and, pulling it cautiously, a large shark came to the surface. I called out loudly, when all the passengers came to my help. He struggled, however, so violently, lashing the water with his tail, and trying to bite the hook asunder, that we were obliged to keep dipping his head under water, and then haul him up two or three feet so that the water ran down into his stomach. We went on repeating this till he was nearly drowned, then sending a running bowline down the rope by which he was caught, and making it taut under his hindermost fin, we clapped the line round the steam-winch, and turned the steam on. Some then hauled his tail up, while all available hands dragged at the other line which held his



head. As soon as we got him on board, he sent about three feet of the ship's bulwarks out by a lash of his tremendous tail—which was cut off by the boatswain with a hatchet, while a dozen of us with bowie-knives finished him and opened his maw. Inside we found six large snakes, two dozen lobsters, two empty quart-bottles, a sheepskin and horns, and the shank-bones of beef which the cook had thrown over-board two days before. The liver filled two large wash-deck tubs, and when the cook melted it down we got ten gallons of oil, which sold at Brisbane at 4s. 6d. a gallon." When his remains were thrown