use in order
to fling overboard unobserved the dreadful thing I carried. But, drying
on the surface in the tropic heat and still 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 bodies of his
kind, and already entering into the processes of digestion. And yet,
there, in the shade on the pin-rail, that unbelievable and monstrous
heart beat on.

CHAPTER XXIV

The voyage is doomed to disaster and death. I know Mr. Pike, now, and if
ever he discovers the identity of Mr. Mellaire, murder will be done. Mr.
Mellaire is not Mr. Mellaire. He is not from Georgia. He is from
Virginia. His name is Waltham--Sidney Waltham. He is one of the
Walthams of Virginia, a black sheep, true, but a Waltham. Of this I am
convinced, just as utterly as I am convinced that Mr. Pike will kill him
if h