line so carefully guarded by the Coromantee!

For full five minutes was this "ring" performance kept up, without any
great alteration occurring in the relative positions of the parties.
But it was a game in which the outside player had all the advantage;
for, although the zygaena had by far the greater distance to traverse,
what was but sport to it was fatigue and the danger of drowning to its
adversaries.

Had its skull been of a different formation, and filled with a better
set of brains, it would have endeavoured to keep up that game, without
in the least degree changing the mode of playing it. In due time, its
chief antagonist, Snowball, must have cried quarter or gone to the
bottom; and far sooner must have sunk the weighted swimmer in his wake.

But sharks, like other creatures both aquatic and terrestrial, have
their moments of impatience and anger; and the zygaena, yielding to
these passions, common to both piscine and human nature, at length
determined to break through the rules of the game, and bring the play to
an abrupt termination.

In obedience to this impulse, it suddenly swerved from its circular
course, and, heading towards the spot where Ben Brace, with Lilly Lalee
clinging to his shoulder, was performing his shorter revolutions, it
made a reckless and determined rush for the centre,--equally regardless
of the admonition of its brace of monitors and the cold steel of the
Coromantee, gleaming clear under the water through which it would have
to make its way. So near had it to pass to the negro's flat nose that
its glutinous skin would be almost in contact with his prominent lips,
and with his outstretched hand he need have no difficulty in striking
his slippery antagonist.

Had Snowball been anticipating this change of tactics, he could not have
acted more adroitly, or with greater promptness. As the zygaena was
gliding onward, and just as its rough _pectoral_ passed within an inch
of his nose, he suddenly returned the knife between his teeth, and,
simultaneously using both hands and limbs, he sprang upward in the
waiter, and, with a vigorous effort, launched himself on its back!

In the next instant he was seen,--or might have been seen,--with one
hand, the left, firmly grasping the bony protuberance of the zygaena's
left eye, his muscular fingers deeply imbedded in the socket, while his
right, clutching the long knife, was inflicting a series of stabs
against the side of his adversary, now fl