came up,--pitching the cockatoo to each other, and all ready to enjoy their bathe; though, for my part, I made but one spring to the ship's starboard quarter, to use the only chance of saving the thoughtless fellows from a bloody fate to some of them. I knew the shark would be cautious at first, on such a sudden to-do, and I had marked his whereabouts while the men were all well toward the bows; and "hang it!" thought I, seeing the old woman's fat pug in my way, "Dianny, or die-all; I bear no malice, but you must go for it, my beauty!" As quick as thought, I made one turn of marline round her nose, took off the pork, and lashed her fast on to the hook all standing, in spite of her squeaks; then twisted the lady's shawl round the chain for a blind to it, and flung the whole right over the larboard quarter, where I guessed the old fellow would be slewing round astern to have a lookout before he went fairly in chase. I watched the line sink slowly with the weight over the gunwale for half a minute, afraid to let him see my head, and trembling for fear I should hear a cry from one of the men; when jerk went the rope clear of a belaying-pin as he ran off with his bait. I took a quick turn to hook him smartly in the throat, and then eased off again till the "cleets" brought him up with a "surge" fit to have parted the line, had it not been good new three-inch rope--though, as it was, the big Indiaman would soon have sheered stern-round to the force of it, if he'd only pulled fair. The young lady stood noticing what I did, first in a perplexed sort of way, and then with no small surprise, especially when the shark gave every now and then a fiercer tug, as he took a sweep astern: by this time, however, everybody was on deck in a crowd, the passengers all in a flurry, and half of the men scrambling up from alongside to tail on to the line, and run him out of water. So away they went with it full speed towards the bows, as soon as the ladies were out of the way--dragging two or three cadets back foremost, head over heels, down the poop stair--till, in spite of his tugging, the shark's round snout showed over the taffrail, with the mouth wide open under his chin, as it were, and one row of teeth laid flat behind another, like a comb-maker's shop. A running bowline passed round his handsome waist, then another pull, and over he came on the poop, floundering fourteen feet long, and flourishing his tail for room, till the carpenter chopped it across, in a lucky moment, with his axe.