the little fellow shoved him off his balance, and he lost his
presence of mind for a moment or two, during which he, if any thing,
widened his distance from the ship.

At this instant the lad on the spritsail-yard sung out quick and
suddenly, "A shark, a shark!"

And the monster, like a silver pillar, suddenly shot up perpendicularly
from out the dark green depths of the sleeping pool, with the waters
sparkling and hissing around him, as if he had been a sea-demon rushing
on his prey.

"Pull for the cable, Louis," shouted fifty voices at once--"pull for the
cable."

The boy did so--we all ran forward. He reached the cable--grasped it
with both hands, and hung on, but before he could swing himself out of
the water, the fierce fish had turned. His whitish-green belly glanced
in the sun--the poor little fellow gave a heart-splitting yell, which
was shattered amongst the impending rocks into piercing echoes, and
these again were reverberated from cavern to cavern, until they died
away amongst the hollows in the distance, as if they had been the faint
shrieks of the damned--yet he held fast for a second or two--the
ravenous tyrant of the sea tug, tugging at him, till the stiff, taught
cable shook again. At length he was torn from his hold, but did not
disappear; the animal continuing on the surface crunching his prey with
his teeth, and digging at him with his jaws, as if trying to gorge a
morsel too large to be swallowed, and making the water flash up in foam
over the boats in pursuit, by the powerful strokes of his tail, but
without ever letting go his hold. The poor lad only cried once more--but
such a cry--oh, God, I never shall forget it!--and, could it be
possible, in his last shriek, his piercing expiring cry, his young voice
seemed to pronounce my name--at least so I thought at the time, and
others thought so too. The next moment he appeared quite dead. No less
than three boats had been in the water alongside when the accident
happend, and they were all on the spot by this time. And there was the
bleeding and mangled boy, torn along the surface of the water by the
shark, with the boats in pursuit, leaving a long stream of blood,
mottled with white specks of fat and marrow in his wake. At length the
man in the bow of the gig laid hold of him by the arm, another sailor
caught the other arm, boat-hooks and oars were dug into and launched at
the monster, who relinquished his prey at last, stripping off the flesh,
ho