generally are the result of ignorance and superstition combined,
the most infernal forces known to humanity. What would be said at home
of such an act, if it could be witnessed among us, as the disembowelling
of a tiger, say, and then letting him run in that horrible condition
somewhere remote from the possibility of retaliating upon his torturers?
Yet that is hardly comparable with a similar atrocity performed upon
a shark, because he will live hours to the tiger's minutes in such a
condition.

I once caught a shark nine feet long, which we hauled on board and
killed by cutting off its head and tail. It died very speedily--for a
shark--all muscular motion ceasing in less than fifteen minutes. It was
my intention to prepare that useless and unornamental article so dear to
sailors--a walking-stick made of a shark's backbone. But when I came to
cut out the vertebra, I noticed a large scar, extending from one side to
the other, right across the centre of the back. Beneath it the backbone
was thickened to treble its normal size, and perfectly rigid; in fact,
it had become a mass of solid bone. At some time or other this shark had
been harpooned so severely that, in wrenching himself free, he must
have nearly torn his body in two halves, severing the spinal column
completely. Yet such a wound as that had been healed by natural process,
the bone knit together again with many times the strength it had
before--minus, of course, its flexibility--and I can testify from the
experience of securing him that he could not possibly have been more
vigorous than he was.

A favourite practice used to be--I trust it is so no longer--to catch a
shark, and, after driving a sharpened stake down through his upper jaw
and out underneath the lower one, so that its upper portion pointed
diagonally forward, to let him go again. The consequence of this cruelty
would be that the fish was unable to open his mouth, or go in any
direction without immediately coming to the surface. How long he might
linger in such torture, one can only guess; but unless his fellows,
finding him thus helpless, came along and kindly devoured him, no doubt
he would exist in extreme agony for a very long time.

Two more small cows were all that rewarded our search during the next
fortnight, and we began to feel serious doubts as to the success of our
season upon the line grounds, after all. Still, on the whole, our voyage
up to the present had not been what might fairly