Captain Mugford Part 6

With the two lines and his exhausted state, it was comparatively easy to bring him to the rocks again, and then with blows of the hatchet we had soon murdered him. Even then it was a job of some moment to get the body safely up the slimy and uneven rocks.

At length our prey was well secured, and we stood about him in triumph.

It was a shark, measuring five feet and three inches in length, and he must certainly have weighed nearly a hundred pounds.

From the study Mr Clare made of the subject, we found that the name by which the shark is technically known is _Squalidae_, which includes a large family fitly designated, as your Latin dictionary will prove when you find the adjective _squalidus_--"filthy, slovenly, loathsome." It is a family of many species, there being some thirty or forty cousins; and the different forms of the teeth, snout, mouth, lips, and tail-fins, the existence or absence of eyelids, spiracles, (those are the apertures by which the water taken in for respiration is thrown out again), the situation of the different fins, etcetera, distinguish the different divisions of the common family. The cousin who, wandering about that stormy Sat.u.r.day, had frightened away the ba.s.s, and finally astonished himself by swallowing a fish-hook when he only thought to suck a dainty bit of his family's favourite delicacy, was known as the _Zygaena_--so Mr Clare introduced him to us when his sharks.h.i.+p had grown so exceedingly diffident as not to be able to say one word for himself--a genus distinguished by having the sides of the head greatly prolonged in a horizontal direction, from which circ.u.mstance they are commonly known as the hammer-headed sharks.

His teeth were in three rows, the points of the teeth being directed towards the corners of the mouth. The two back rows were bent down, and only intended, Mr Clare told us, to replace the foremost when injured.

These horrible teeth were notched like a saw.

I think the face, if so you might call it, of that piratical fish wore the most fearfully cruel and rapacious expression I had ever seen. That _Zygaena_ family of the _Squalidae_, (I think they sound more horribly devilish when called by their cla.s.sical t.i.tles), is one dangerous to man, and it is very rare that a man-eating or man-biting shark is ever found on the English coast.

I proposed to cut him open, and so we did. Among the half-digested food, most of which was fish, I found something that at first looked like a leather strap. I seized it and pulled it out. Surely there was a buckle. I washed and laid it out on the rock, while we all gathered about in great excitement to make out what our dead enemy had been preying on. There was no longer a doubt that it was a dog-collar--the collar of a medium-sized dog, perhaps a spaniel or terrier. There was a plate on it, which, with a little rubbing, we made to read, "David Atherton, Newcastle." How very strange! Had the little fellow been washed overboard from some vessel? or had he swum off some neighbouring beach to bring a stick for his master?

We could never discover any antecedents of any kind whatever to that mysterious sequel to "The Romance of the Poor Young Dog." Was there a fond master mourning for him in Newcastle, England, or in Newcastle, Pennsylvania? Alas, poor dog! thou wert hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed from this world--the ocean thy grave and a shark's belly thy coffin. Thy collar hangs, as I write this, over my study table, and many a time has my old Ponto sniffed at that relic of a fellow-dog, and his eyes grown moist as I repeated to him my surmises of the sad fate of David Atherton's companion.

Mr Clare told us a good deal about sharks. Of the many varieties, the most hideous is the Wolf-fish, (_Anarrhicas lupus_). Though much smaller than the white shark, he is a very formidable creature. He has six rows of grinders in each jaw, excellently adapted for bruising the crabs, lobsters, scallops, and large whelks, which the voracious animal grinds to pieces, and swallows along with the sh.e.l.ls. When caught, it fastens with indiscriminate rage upon anything within its reach, fights desperately, even when out of the water, and inflicts severe wounds if not avoided cautiously. Schonfeld relates this wolf-fish will seize on an anchor and leave the marks of its teeth in it, and Steller mentions one on the coast of Kamschatka, which he saw lay hold of a cutla.s.s, with which a man was attempting to kill it, and break it to bits as if it had been made of gla.s.s. This monster is, from its great size, one of the most formidable denizens of the ocean; in the British waters it attains the length of six or seven feet, and is said to be much larger in the more Northern seas. It usually frequents the deep parts of the sea, but comes among the marine plants of the coast in spring, to deposit its sp.a.w.n. It swims rather slowly, and glides along with somewhat of the motion of an eel.

The white shark is far more dreadful, from its gigantic size and strength; its jaws are also furnished with from three to six rows of strong, flat, triangular, sharp-pointed, and finely serrated teeth, which it can raise or depress at will.

This brute grows to a length of thirty feet, and its strength may be imagined from the fact that a young shark, only six feet long, has been known to break a man's leg by a stroke of its tail. Therefore, when sailors have caught a shark at sea, with a baited hook, the first thing they do when it is drawn upon deck is to chop off its tail, to prevent the mischief to be dreaded from its immense strength.

Hughes, the author of the "Natural History of Barbadoes," relates an anecdote which gives a good idea of the nature of this monster: "In the reign of Queen Anne a merchant s.h.i.+p from England arrived at Barbadoes; some of the crew, ignorant of the danger of doing so, were bathing in the sea, when a large shark suddenly appeared swimming directly towards them. All hurried on board, and escaped, except one unfortunate fellow, who was bit in two by the shark. A comrade and friend of the man, seeing the severed body of his companion, vowed instant revenge. The voracious shark was seen swimming about in search of the rest of his prey, when the brave lad leaped into the water. He carried in his hand a long, sharp-pointed knife, and the fierce monster pushed furiously towards him. Already he had turned over, and opened his huge, deadly jaws, when the youth, diving cleverly, seized the shark somewhere near the fins with his left hand, and stabbed him several times in the belly.

The creature, mad with pain and streaming with blood, attempted vainly to escape. The crews of the s.h.i.+ps near saw that the fight was over, but knew not which was slain, till, as the shark became exhausted, he rose nearer the sh.o.r.e, and the gallant a.s.sailant still continuing his efforts, was able, with a.s.sistance, to drag him on sh.o.r.e. There he ripped open the stomach of the shark and took from it the half of his friend's body, which he then buried together with the trunk half."

The negroes are admirable swimmers and divers, and they sometimes attack and vanquish the terrible shark, but great skill is necessary.

When Sir Brooke Watson, as a youth, was in the West Indies, he was once swimming near a s.h.i.+p when he saw a shark making towards him. He cried out in terror for help, and caught a rope thrown to him; but even as the men were drawing him up the side of the vessel, the monster darted after, and took off his leg at a single snap.

Fortunately for sea-bathers on our sh.o.r.es, the white shark and the monstrous hammer-headed _zygaena_ seldom appear in the colder lat.i.tudes, though both have occasionally been seen on the British coasts.

The northern ocean has its peculiar sharks, but some are good-natured, like the huge basking shark, (_S maximus_), and feed on seaweeds and medusae and the rest, such as the _picked_ dog-fish, (_Galeus acanthius_), are, although fierce, of too small a size to be dangerous to man.

But the dog-fish and others, such as the blue shark, are very troublesome and injurious to the fisherman; though they do not venture to attack him, for they hover about his boat and cut the hooks from his lines. Indeed, this sometimes leads to their own destruction; and when their teeth do not deliver them from their difficulty, the blue sharks, which hover about the coast of Cornwall during the pilchard season, roll their bodies round so as to twine the line about them in its whole length, and often in such a way that Mr Yarrell has known a fisherman give up as hopeless the attempt to unroll it.

This shark is very dangerous to the pilchard drift-net, and very often will pa.s.s along the whole length of net, cutting out, as if with shears, the fish and the net which holds them, and swallowing both together.

CHAPTER TEN.

UGLY--PLOVER, SNIPE, AND RABBIT SHOOTING--A CRUISE PROPOSED.

Recounting that last event reminds me of a well-beloved character in our cape days--one, too, that was destined to play an important part in our little drama.

Ugly was his name; Trusty Greatheart it should have been.

Ugly was a clipped-eared, setter-tailed, short-legged, long-haired, black-nosed, bright-eyed little mongrel. In limiting his ancestry to no particular aristocratic family, he could prove some of the blood of many. There were evident traces of the water-spaniel, the Skye terrier, and that most beautiful of all the hound family--the beagle.

I do not know what education Ugly may have had in his earlier days, but I believe it to have been limited, though his acquirements were great.

I believe him to have been a canine genius. He was as ready on the water as on the land. His feats of diving and swimming were remarkable; and a better rabbit-dog and more sagacious, courageous watchdog never lived. As to the languages, I will acknowledge he could speak none; but he understood English perfectly, and never failed to construe rightly any of Mr Clare's Latin addresses--much better than ever Walter could do. Indeed, Mr Clare's commands to and conversations with Ugly were always in Latin.

Of his rare sagacity and unbounded affection there are proofs to be furnished further on in this narrative.

Harry Higginson and Walter had guns, and they alone of our number were allowed to use them. That exclusion never caused me any regrets, nor do I think it troubled Alfred Higginson, but it was a constant pain to Drake. He loved a gun, and his most golden dream of manhood's happiness was the possession of a good fowling-piece. The prohibition of our parents, however, was so stringent in this particular that poor Drake never sighted along the bright barrels nor even touched the well-oiled stocks but once while we were at the cape.

There they stood, always ready, in a corner of our attic--where Drake, Alf, and I could not touch them, but ready at any time for the pleasure of Walter and Harry.

Walter was an accomplished shot, and Harry was not a bad one. Harry had not had the training of Walter, whom my father had taught--not commencing with stationary objects, but with targets thrown in the air, and small, slow-winged birds as they flitted near the ground. My father had at first made him practise for a long time without caps, powder, or shot, merely in quickly bringing the stock close to the shoulder, and getting the eye directly behind the breech. When proficiency in that had become a mechanical habit, the gun was loaded, and then commenced the practice of shooting at moving objects. As the art of bringing the gun properly to the cheek had been so thoroughly mastered as to require no effort nor attention, Walter could, when an object was thrown up, direct all his care to bringing the muzzle of the piece--the sight-- directly on that object. My father's reason for teaching him first to shoot at flying marks was to prevent the habit of dwelling long on an aim--that habit of following or _poking_ at the bird which ruins good shooting, and prevents the possibility of becoming a good snap shot.

And so, afterwards, Drake and I were taught; and boys who are learning to shoot will find, that by remembering and practising the method I have described, instead of commencing by taking long, deliberate aims at stationary objects, they will get ahead surprisingly fast, far outstripping those who learn by the latter way.

In our rambles about the cape, Ugly soon displayed his talent for rabbit-hunting. He would smell where Bunny had been wandering and follow the track until he started Miss Long-ears from her covert, and then the fun began--the rabbit leaping off in frightened haste, running for life, winding and dodging about over the swells of the spa.r.s.e gra.s.s hillocks, while Ugly, mad with excitement, spread his long, low body down to the chase. How the little fellow would put in his nose close to the ground, staunch on the trail as the best-blooded hound, and making the air ring with his sharp but musical bark! I tell you that was fun!

Ugly always stuck to his game until he had run it to its burrow. He had not the speed to overtake it.

The summer is not the proper season for rabbit-shooting; so Walter, who was never to be tempted by the best chance of killing game even a day out of season, would not permit either Harry or himself to shoot at the objects of Ugly's furious energy until it was legitimate. That conduct of Walter and Harry was beyond Ugly's comprehension. I have often seen him try to understand it. The chase having ended as usual in a safe burrow, I have noticed Ugly--who, after a very short experience, had learned not to waste his time in vain digging--turn toward us with a waddling, disconsolate trot, and having approached a few rods, stop and sit down to revolve the puzzle over in his mind. He would look where the rabbit had housed himself, then drop his head, c.o.c.k up an ear, and cast an inquiring glance toward us, as much as to say: "Why, _do_ tell Ugly why you did not shoot that old lap-ears? Ah!" That operation he would repeat several times before rejoining us, and when he had come up he would c.o.c.k his head first one side and then the other, and look into our faces with most beseeching questioning in those great, keen, brown eyes of his. Then he would hang behind on our way home, evidently greatly distressed at his ignorance.

Never mind, good Ugly! I believe you were fully rewarded for weeks of bewilderment when the time did come for knocking over bunnies.

One afternoon, in returning from one of those rambles, we met our salt tute hurrying towards us in a great state of haste and perspiration.

When near enough for his hoa.r.s.e ba.s.s voice to reach us, he hailed--

"Well, there you are, boys, at last! I have been hunting for you all over the cape for the last hour. Ah! Ugly, boy, are you glad to see the old Captain trudging over the rabbit-ground? Eh? s.h.a.ggy boy! And you have been running the bunnies till you are blown, and your masters would not shoot--eh? Well, no matter; the Captain shall bring his marline-spike along some day, and help you bag them. But, my affectionate pup, do you take a turn in that tail, or you'll wag it off some windy day."

So Ugly sat down--a long, red, wet tongue hanging from the side of his mouth--and whipped the gra.s.s between the Captain's boots with that restless tail until we came up.

"Why, Captain Mugford," said Walter, "I did not know you ever wanted _us_."

"No? Well, I do though, just now. You see, boys, as to-morrow will be Sat.u.r.day, with every prospect of fair weather and a good breeze, I thought we might go on a cruise--start early, get our meals on board, run off to the fis.h.i.+ng-grounds, and make a voyage of general exploration. And to do this we must get our traps aboard this evening, and see that everything is in order on board the _Youth_."

"Good! nothing could suit us better, Captain. I'll run to the house with the guns," said Harry, "and we can all go at once off to the _Youth_."

"Mr Clare," continued Captain Mugford, "can't go with us, he says, but must walk over to Q---town and spend the day. That's a pity, for I calculated on having a capital time all together, on a voyage like this one we propose."

"Well, we boys," said Walter, "will ask him this evening to put off his visit. Perhaps he may change his mind."

When Harry returned we went down to our cutter, all in great spirits on account of the fun proposed for the next day.

Getting on board, we mopped and swabbed her out well, overhauled the ropes and sails, and hauled down the pennant to take home with us for Juno to mend where it had frayed out on the point. That work being completed, we went to the house for such provisions as we should want on our excursion. Juno put up a large supply for one day--ground coffee, eggs, biscuit, cold mutton, a cold turkey, and several currant and apple pies, besides b.u.t.ter, salt, etcetera--and Clump conveyed it down to the _Youth_ for us on a wheelbarrow.

The provisions were carefully stowed in the forepeak, and everything being arranged, we appointed Ugly to act as a guard over our craft during the night.

Harry briefly explained it to him. "Look here, Ugly, you are to stay here to-night and look after the things. Of course you are not to come ash.o.r.e or leave duty for a minute. We shall be down early in the morning. Be ready to receive us with proper ceremonies, for we are off on a cruise, old boatswain, to-morrow. Look, Ugly; I put your supper in this stern locker. Do you see?"

Ugly was at first rather disappointed at the prospect of being separated from us for the night, but as Harry's harangue proceeded and he began to comprehend the honour of the duty required aboard s.h.i.+p, he bristled up and grew as stiff and important as his inches would allow. He turned his nose to watch where the supper was placed, and then walked forward and took a seat on the bow a.s.suming a comical air of "captaincy;" so pantomimic was it that Captain Mugford laughed aloud, and said: "Well done, Ugly; where, my fine fellow, did you learn quarterdeck airs?"

"Good-night, Captain Ugly," we cried, as we pushed for the sh.o.r.e in the punt. "Good-night, boy; can't you say something, Captain Gruff?"

At which address Ugly rose up and, putting his forefeet on the larboard gunwale, barked three loud, clear notes, and we gave three laughing cheers as he returned to his post by the bowsprit.

Before going to bed that night, I went out in the kitchen to put a pair of my shoes to dry, and found Clump and Juno, as usual in the evenings, smoking and dozing over the fire.