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 his day, he had murdered, not
killed, shoals of Tiger Sharks.

Yet this is all wrong. As well hate a seraph, as a shark. Both were
made by the same hand. And that sharks are lovable, witness their
domestic endearments. No Fury so ferocious, as not to have some
amiable side. In the wild wilderness, a leopard-mother caresses her
cub, as Hagar did Ishmael; or a queen of France the dauphin. We know
not what we do when we hate. And I have the word of my gentlemanly