ern like a
miniature Milky Way. It was a beautiful spectacle, and one at which an
imaginative person might have gazed for a full hour or more without
tiring. But Tom, the helmsman, was not an imaginative man, and the
spectacle of a ship's wake glowing and scintillating with sea-stars was
one that he had beheld so often that it had long ceased to appeal to him
as anything at all uncommon. It was something else that had attracted
his attention, and that he had thought might interest "the lady." For
there, in the very thickest of the swirling mass of clouds and discs and
circles and stars of sea-fire, at a depth of perhaps six feet below the
surface, was to be seen, brilliantly illuminated by its own movement
through the water, the glowing shape of an enormous shark, fully twenty
feet in length, keeping pace with the brig as steadily as if he were
being towed by her. The whole bulk of the monster was clearly,
startlingly, distinct, much more so than would have been the case at
daytime, for his body showed against the black water like a shape of
white fire, while with every sweep of his powerful tail he scattered a
trail of glowing sparks behind him that constituted of itself quite a
respectable wake.

"Oh, what a dreadful creature!" exclaimed Miss Trevor, shrinking back in
dismay at the sight. "It is like a nightmare! That must surely be a
shark; is it not? It is the first shark I have ever seen, Mr Leslie;
and I am certain that I never wish to see another. I had no idea that
sharks were such monstrous creatures; I always thought that they were
about the same size as the porpoises that we were looking at this
afternoon."

"Yes," laughed Leslie, "very possibly. This, however, is rather an
exceptionally fine fellow, although I have seen even bigger specimens
than he. Do not look at him too long," he continued, "or possibly you
may dream of him, in which case he would be likely to prove a nightmare
to you indeed."

"He've been followin' of us for the last hour, sir," remarked the
helmsman. "And they _do_ say that when a shark hangs on to a ship like
that, somebody's goin' to die aboard of her."

"Yes," answered Leslie, carelessly, "I have heard that story myself; but
I don't believe it, for I have been in ships that have been followed for
days on end by sharks, without anything coming of it--except that we
have generally managed to catch the sharks themselves at last. No; this
fellow is following us because