il from his body, and thus incapacitated
him from mischief. From time immemorial it has been the ship carpenter's
privilege and duty to out off the tails of all sharks captured during a
deep-sea voyage, and the cook generally despatches him much after the
fashion of a Japanese when he performs on himself the queer right of
hari-kari.

"Chips," said the skipper, addressing the carpenter, "before you cut
that shark up, just pull that rule out of your pocket and measure him.
He seems quite a big fellow."

And a big fellow he proved to be, measuring 30 feet 8-1/2 inches long.
The Captain said he was the largest one he had ever seen, but the chief
mate declared he had once captured one that measured 38 feet, and he had
sailed with a skipper who had hauled one in-board that was fully 40 feet
in length. As a matter of fact, specimens of pelagic sharks are
displayed in museums that exceed 40 feet, but they are very rare. In
Florida varieties of fossil sharks have been dug up whose length "over
all" averages more than 50 feet, but these are now happily extinct.

Seafaring men are not as a rule a bloodthirsty race, but they look upon
sharks as their natural enemies, and against them they wage relentless
warfare; and whenever one is hooked they rejoice with an exuberant
pleasure, and will sacrifice their watch below in order to see him cut
and carved. There is also much curiosity with regard to the contents of
his interior. I once had for a shipmate a man who swore hard and fast
that he once found in a shark a ship's chronometer that was still
ticking. He was quite a truthful man too, but somehow I never believed
that yarn. Of course a shark is one of the most ravenous and rapacious
of fishes, and queer articles have undoubtedly been discovered in their
stomachs.

Inside the one just caught there were two of the Captain's ducks, and
not a morsel of anything else, which probably accounted for the greed
with which he swallowed the four-pound chunk of briny pork. It is a
tradition among sailors that sharks will not bite at a piece of beef,
and I never heard of one being hooked with any bovine bait. In this the
shark shows excellent taste and judgment, for the "salt junk" served out
to seafarers is by no means a succulent or dainty dish. As a matter of
fact, I have known a sailor to whittle out of it a fair model of the
hull of a ship, and to dry it in the sun for two or three weeks, when it
would come out for all the world as har