peering about for sharks. The screams of the men who stayed by
the canoe informed us that they were taken. I was peering into
the water when I saw a big shark pass directly beneath me. He was
fully sixteen feet in length. I saw the whole thing. He got the
woolly head by the middle and away he went, the poor devil, head,
shoulders, and arms out of water all the time, screeching in a
heart-rending way. He was carried along in this fashion for
several hundred feet, when he was dragged beneath the surface.

I swam doggedly on, hoping that that was the last unattached
shark. But there was another. Whether it was one that had
attacked the natives earlier, or whether it was one that had made
a good meal elsewhere, I do not know. At any rate, he was not in
such haste as the others. I could not swim so rapidly now, for a
large part of my effort was devoted to keeping track of him. I
was watching him when he made his first attack. By good luck I
got both hands on his nose, and, though his momentum nearly
shoved me under, I managed to keep him off. He veered clear and
began circling about again. A second time I escaped him by the
same maneuver. The third rush was a miss on both sides. He
sheered at the moment my hands should have landed on his nose,
but his sandpaper hide--I had on a sleeveless undershirt--scraped
the skin off one arm from elbow to shoulder.

By this time I was played out and gave up hope. The schooner was
still two hundred feet away. My face was in the water and I was
watching him maneuver for another attempt, when I saw a brown
body pass between us. It was Otoo.

"Swim for the schooner, master," he said, and he spoke gayly, as