The clean water soon brought out the features, as the blood and ooze were removed; and though the collapsed eye-balls, unsupported as in life, no longer shot menacing glances from their cartilaginous pivots, but fell back opaque and dimmed into the sockets, an expression any thing but amiable was still exhibited in their barred pupils of Minerva gray. The whole forehead was bathed with that phosphorescent mucus or jelly which gives this fish its luminous and spectral appearance, when seen in the dusk, and adds new terrors to the ill-omened apparition. The aspect of the face was malign enough; but when the den of his mouth was forced open, and we ventured to peep in, and saw there three rows of sharp and pointed teeth, that alive in one effort of volition might have been brought to bear all at once upon the largest prey, and made him spout blood at every pore, it became apparent that a fish, even like this of only eight or nine feet long, with such a jaw to tear, such a trunk to smash, and such a tail to stun, must have been capable of destroying the life of almost any creature he might encounter; and we entered readily into the feelings of delight and triumph expressed by the fishermen at the capture of so thoroughly a _mauvais sujet_. Besides the jeopardy in which he places life, the mischief a single shark will occasion to the thunny and cod fisheries is incalculable; two or three of these marauders suffice to interrupt, and sometimes effectually to disconcert all the operations of the poor fishermen. The blue shark in particular, during the pilchard season, will hover about the tackle, clear the long lines of every hook, biting them off above the bait—break through the newly shot nets, or fairly swallow the distended mesh-work and its draught together. Nor is this all, nor yet the worst mischief recorded of sharks: fond as they are of fish, they greatly prefer flesh, and, unfortunately for man, his flesh before that of beast or bird. Acutely discriminative, too, in taste, their partiality is decidedly for a European rather than an Asiatic—for a fair rather than a dark skin: on this account, in a mixed group of bathers, the white complexioned are always the selected victims of a first attack; but to get at human flesh of any description, they will make extraordinary efforts—bound for this purpose out of the sea like tigers from a jungle, right athwart a vessel in full course, to pick off some unwary sailor occupied in the rigging—or leap into a high fishing-boat, to the consternation of the crew, and grapple with the men at their oars; or, when hard pressed and hungry, even spring ashore and attack man on his own element. A famished shark will snap up every thing; but though he may swallow all, yet there are some morsels even a shark cannot stomach; witness the following lively anecdote from the _Edinburgh Observer_: