Delta
of mouths. Slowly it sinks, and is seen no more.

Doctor Faust saw the devil; but you have seen the "Devil Fish."

Look again! Here comes another. Jarl calls it a Bone Shark. Full as
large as a whale, it is spotted like a leopard; and tusk-like teeth
overlap its jaws like those of the walrus. To seamen, nothing strikes
more terror than the near vicinity of a creature like this. Great
ships steer out of its path. And well they may; since the good craft
Essex, and others, have been sunk by sea-monsters, as the alligator
thrusts his horny snout through a Carribean canoe.

Ever present to us, was the apprehension of some sudden disaster from
the extraordinary zoological specimens we almost hourly passed.

For the sharks, we saw them, not by units, nor by tens, nor by
hundreds; but by thousands and by myriads. Trust me, there are more
sharks in the sea than mortals on land.

And of these prolific fish there are full as many species as of dogs.
But by the German naturalists Muller and Henle, who, in christening
the sharks, have bestowed upon them the most heathenish names, they
are classed under one family; which family, according to Muller,
king-at-arms, is an undoubted branch of the ancient and famous tribe
of the Chondropterygii.

To begin. There is the ordinary Brown Shark, or sea attorney, so
called by sailors; a grasping, rapacious varlet, that in spite of the
hard knocks received from it, often snapped viciously at our steering
oar. At times, these gentry swim in herds; especially about the
remains of a slaughtered whale. They are the vultures of the deep.

Then we often encountered the dandy Blue Shark, a long, taper and
mighty genteel looking fellow, with a slender waist, like a Bond-
street beau, and the whitest tiers of teeth imaginable. This dainty
spark invariably lounged by with a careless fin and an indolent tail.
But he looked infernally heartless.

How his cold-blooded, gentlemanly air, contrasted with the rude,
savage swagger of the Tiger Shark; a round, portly gourmand; with
distended mouth and collapsed conscience, swimming about seeking whom
he might devour. These gluttons are the scavengers of navies,
following ships in the South Seas, picking up odds and ends of
garbage, and sometimes a tit-bit, a stray sailor. No wonder, then,
that sailors denounce them. In substance, Jarl once assured me, that
under any temporary misfortune, it was one of his sweetest
consolations to remember, that in