It was half-past nine in the morning--De Walden and I were seated on the cliff where I had been shot at the day before. The only indications of the spent storm were a line of froth, intermixed with large quantities of wreck and drift-wood, on the beach, far above high water-mark; branches of trees strewed here and there, with their yesterday bright green leaves, now sun-withered and as red and sere as if they had lain a winter on the ground; and overhead, a clear, cool, luxurious air and sky. The hillsides had even become perceptibly greener in one night's time--in short, Dame Nature had got her face well washed, and every thing was clean, and fresh, and shining. The sea-breeze was roughening the water in the offing, but in the cove, on which we looked down, all was as yet as smooth as glass. The undulations flowing towards the harbour's mouth, occasioned by what I would call the echo of the ground swell, or the reverberation of the send of the sea from the rocky beach, were scarcely perceptible; except from the varying shadows of the banks, and grey clouds, as the plane from which they were reflected was gently bent by the rise and fall of the water. The whole creek was sprinkled throughout its calm surface, by masses of floating wreck from the Mosca, that sparkled with the motion of the water, slight as it was, in the slanting rays of the morning sun; while out to windward, near the entrance, there was a blue ripple on the sea right in his wake, that prevented us seeing distinctly what it was, but which I guessed to proceed from the rushing of fish, at some object on which they were feeding. As the sun rose, the dazzle hauled further off, and we then could plainly see three immense green skinned sharks, tearing at the floating body of a seaman; every now and then one of them would seize a limb, and drag the carcass a fathom or so under water--when the second would make a rush, and seize another limb, and there would the dead body appear suspended between them, as if it had been standing on its feet and alive; the jaugle of the water giving the limbs the appearance of struggling. Then again the third shark, like a dog walking off with a bone from two others who were quarrelling about it, would seize the trunk, and back-backing, forcibly drag it away from the others, and make sail with it across his jaws into the silvery glare, pursued by his mates, when the whole would once more disappear. Their whereabouts, however, was still distinctly marked by the wheeling of half a dozen pelicans; an individual bird dropping every now and then into the water with a splash; while the lighter gulls and sea-mews were glancing about in all directions, whistling shrill, and twinkling with their light wings in the distance like silver butterflies, as they pounced on the fragments that were disengaged by the teeth of the monsters in the water.