e were lying at
Savo, having run in to trade for curios.

Now, Savo is alive with sharks. The custom of the woolly-heads of
burying their dead in the sea did not tend to discourage the sharks from
making the adjacent waters a hang-out. It was my luck to be coming
aboard in a tiny, overloaded, native canoe, when the thing capsized.
There were four woolly-heads and myself in it, or, rather, hanging to
it. The schooner was a hundred yards away. I was just hailing for a boat
when one of the woolly-heads began to scream. Holding on to the end of
the canoe, both he and that portion of the canoe were dragged under
several times. Then he loosed his clutch and disappeared. A shark had
got him.

The three remaining savages tried to climb out of the water upon the
bottom of the canoe. I yelled and struck at the nearest with my fist,
but it was no use. They were in a blind funk. The canoe could barely
have supported one of them. Under the three it upended and rolled
sidewise, throwing them back into the water.

I abandoned the canoe and started to swim toward the schooner, expecting
to be picked up by the boat before I got there. One of the savages
elected to come with me, and we swam along silently, side by side, now
and again putting our faces into the water and peering about for sharks.
The screams of the man who stayed by the canoe informed us that he was
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
heartrending 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 the 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 bot