ke it rot, extinguishing other beings, depopulating the globe....
But death was charged with saving universal life. The cetaceans bore
down upon this living density and with their insatiable mouths devoured
the nourishment by ton loads. Infinitely little fish seconded the
efforts of the marine giants, stuffing themselves with the eggs of the
herring. The most gluttonous fish, the cod and the hake, pursued these
prairies of meat, pushing them, toward the coasts and finally
dispersing them.

The cod increases its species most prodigiously, surfeiting itself upon
hake, until the world is again menaced. The ocean might be converted
into a mass of cod, for each one can produce as many as nine million
eggs.... Mankind might be overwhelmed under the onslaught of the more
fertile fishes, and the cod might maintain immense fleets, creating,
besides, colonies and cities. Human generations might become exhausted
without succeeding in conquering this monstrous reproduction. The great
marine devourers, therefore, are those that reestablish equilibrium and
order. The sturgeon, insatiable stomach, intervenes in the oceanic
banquet, relishing in the cod the concentrated substance of armies of
herring. But this oviparous devourer of such great reproductive power
would, in turn, continue the world danger were it not that another
monster as avid in appetite as it is weak in procreation, intervenes
and cuts down with one blow the ever-increasing fecundity of the ocean.

The superior glutton is the shark,--that mouth with fins, that natatory
intestine which swallows with equal indifference the dead and the
living, flesh and wood, cleanses the waters of life and leaves a desert
behind its wriggling tail; but this destroyer brings forth only one
shark that is born armed and ferocious ready from the very first moment
to continue the paternal exploits, like a feudal heir.

Ferragut's wandering life as a pilot abounded in dramatic
adventures,--a few always standing out clearly from his many confused
recollections of exotic lands and interminable seas.

In Glasgow he embarked as second mate on an old sailing tramp that was
bound for Chile, to unload coal in Valparaiso and take on saltpeter in
Iquique. The crossing of the Atlantic was good, but upon leaving the
Malvina Islands the boat had to go out in the teeth of a torrid,
furious blast that closed the passage to the Pacific. The Straits of
Magellan are for ships that are able to avail themse