pulsing inside, it stuck to my hand, so that it was a bad cast.
Instead of clearing the railing, it struck on the pin-rail and stuck
there in the shade, and as I opened the door to go below and wash my
hands, with a last glance I saw it pulse where it had fallen.

When I came back it was still pulsing. I heard a splash overside
from the waist of the ship, and knew the carcass had been flung
overboard. I did not go around the chart-house and join Miss West,
but stood enthralled by the spectacle of that heart that beat in the
tropic heat.

Boisterous shouts from the sailors attracted my attention. They had
all climbed to the top of the tall rail and were watching something
outboard. I followed their gaze and saw the amazing thing. That
long-eviscerated shark was not dead. It moved, it swam, it thrashed
about, and ever it strove to escape from the surface of the ocean.
Sometimes it swam down as deep as fifty or a hundred feet, and then,
still struggling to escape the surface, struggled involuntarily to
the surface. Each failure thus to escape fetched wild laughter from
the men. But why did they laugh? The thing was sublime, horrible,
but it was not humorous. I leave it to you. What is there laughable
in the sight of a pain-distraught fish rolling helplessly on the
surface of the sea and exposing to the sun all its essential
emptiness?

I was turning away, when renewed shouting drew my gaze. Half a dozen
other sharks had appeared, smaller ones, nine or ten feet long. They
attacked their helpless comrade. They tore him to pieces they
destroyed him, devoured him. I saw the last shred of him disappear
down their maws. He was gone, disintegrated, entombed in the living