In Search of the Castaways; or the Children of Captain Grant

CHAPTER I THE SHARK

ON the 26th of Ju­ly, 1864, a mag­nif­icent yacht was steam­ing along the North Chan­nel at full speed, with a strong breeze blow­ing from the N. E. The Union Jack was fly­ing at the mizzen-​mast, and a blue stan­dard bear­ing the ini­tials E. G., em­broi­dered in gold, and sur­mount­ed by a ducal coro­net, float­ed from the top­gal­lant head of the main-​mast. The name of the yacht was the DUN­CAN, and the own­er was Lord Gle­nar­van, one of the six­teen Scotch peers who sit in the Up­per House, and the most dis­tin­guished mem­ber of the Roy­al Thames Yacht Club, so fa­mous through­out the Unit­ed King­dom.

Lord Ed­ward Gle­nar­van was on board with his young wife, La­dy He­le­na, and one of his cousins, Ma­jor Mc­Nabbs.

The DUN­CAN was new­ly built, and had been mak­ing a tri­al trip a few miles out­side the Firth of Clyde. She was re­turn­ing to Glas­gow, and the Isle of Ar­ran al­ready loomed in the dis­tance, when the sailor on watch caught sight of an enor­mous fish sport­ing in the wake of the ship. Lord Ed­ward, who was im­me­di­ate­ly ap­prised of the fact, came up on the poop a few min­utes af­ter with his cousin, and asked John Man­gles, the cap­tain, what sort of an an­imal he thought it was.

“Well, since your Lord­ship asks my opin­ion,” said Man­gles, “I think it is a shark, and a fine large one too.”

“A shark on these shores!”

“There is noth­ing at all im­prob­able in that,” re­turned the cap­tain. “This fish be­longs to a species that is found in all lat­itudes and in all seas. It is the ‘bal­ance-​fish,’ or ham­mer-​head­ed shark, if I am not much mis­tak­en. But if your Lord­ship has no ob­jec­tions, and it would give the small­est plea­sure to La­dy He­le­na to see a nov­el­ty in the way of fish­ing, we’ll soon haul up the mon­ster and find out what it re­al­ly is.”

“What do you say, Mc­Nabbs? Shall we try to catch it?” asked Lord Gle­nar­van.

“If you like; it’s all one to me,” was his cousin’s cool re­ply.

“The more of those ter­ri­ble crea­tures that are killed the bet­ter, at all events,” said John Man­gles, “so let’s seize the chance, and it will not on­ly give us a lit­tle di­ver­sion, but be do­ing a good ac­tion.”

“Very well, set to work, then,” said Gle­nar­van.

La­dy He­le­na soon joined her hus­band on deck, quite charmed at the prospect of such ex­cit­ing sport. The sea was splen­did, and ev­ery move­ment of the shark was dis­tinct­ly vis­ible. In obe­di­ence to the cap­tain’s or­ders, the sailors threw a strong rope over the star­board side of the yacht, with a big hook at the end of it, con­cealed in a thick lump of ba­con. The bait took at once, though the shark was full fifty yards dis­tant. He be­gan to make rapid­ly for the yacht, beat­ing the waves vi­olent­ly with his fins, and keep­ing his tail in a per­fect­ly straight line. As he got near­er, his great pro­ject­ing eyes could be seen in­flamed with greed, and his gap­ing jaws with their quadru­ple row of teeth. His head was large, and shaped like a dou­ble ham­mer at the end of a han­dle. John Man­gles was right. This was ev­ident­ly a bal­ance-​fish– the most vo­ra­cious of all the SQUAL­IDAE species.

The pas­sen­gers and sailors on the yacht were watch­ing all the an­imal’s move­ments with the liveli­est in­ter­est. He soon came with­in reach of the bait, turned over on his back to make a good dart at it, and in a sec­ond ba­con and con­tents had dis­ap­peared. He had hooked him­self now, as the tremen­dous jerk he gave the ca­ble proved, and the sailors be­gan to haul in the mon­ster by means of tack­le at­tached to the main­yard. He strug­gled des­per­ate­ly, but his cap­tors were pre­pared for his vi­olence, and had a long rope ready with a slip knot, which caught his tail and ren­dered him pow­er­less at once. In a few min­utes more he was hoist­ed up over the side of the yacht and thrown on the deck. A man came for­ward im­me­di­ate­ly, hatch­et in hand, and ap­proach­ing him cau­tious­ly, with one pow­er­ful stroke cut off his tail.

This end­ed the busi­ness, for there was no longer any fear of the shark. But, though the sailors’ vengeance was sat­is­fied, their cu­rios­ity was not; they knew the brute had no very del­icate ap­petite, and the con­tents of his stom­ach might be worth in­ves­ti­ga­tion. This is the com­mon prac­tice on all ships when a shark is cap­tured, but La­dy Gle­nar­van de­clined to be present at such a dis­gust­ing ex­plo­ration, and with­drew to the cab­in again. The fish was still breath­ing; it mea­sured ten feet in length, and weighed more than six hun­dred pounds. This was noth­ing ex­traor­di­nary, for though the ham­mer-​head­ed shark is not classed among the most gi­gan­tic of the species, it is al­ways reck­oned among the most formidable.

The huge brute was soon ripped up in a very un­cer­emo­ni­ous fash­ion. The hook had fixed right in the stom­ach, which was found to be ab­so­lute­ly emp­ty, and the dis­ap­point­ed sailors were just go­ing to throw the re­mains over­board, when the boatswain’s at­ten­tion was at­tract­ed by some large ob­ject stick­ing fast in one of the vis­cera.

“I say! what’s this?” he ex­claimed.

“That!” replied one of the sailors, “why, it’s a piece of rock the beast swal­lowed by way of bal­last.”

“It’s just a bot­tle, nei­ther more nor less, that the fel­low has got in his in­side, and couldn’t di­gest,” said an­oth­er of the crew.

“Hold your tongues, all of you!” said Tom Austin, the mate of the DUN­CAN. “Don’t you see the an­imal has been such an in­vet­er­ate tip­pler that he has not on­ly drunk the wine, but swal­lowed the bot­tle?”

“What!” said Lord Gle­nar­van. “Do you mean to say it is a bot­tle that the shark has got in his stom­ach.”

“Ay, it is a bot­tle, most cer­tain­ly,” replied the boatswain, “but not just from the cel­lar.”

“Well, Tom, be care­ful how you take it out,” said Lord Gle­nar­van, “for bot­tles found in the sea of­ten con­tain pre­cious doc­uments.”

“Do you think this does?” said Ma­jor Mc­Nabbs, in­cred­ulous­ly.

“It pos­si­bly may, at any rate.”

“Oh! I’m not say­ing it doesn’t. There may per­haps be some se­cret in it,” re­turned the Ma­jor.

“That’s just what we’re to see,” said his cousin. “Well, Tom.”

“Here it is,” said the mate, hold­ing up a shape­less lump he had man­aged to pull out, though with some dif­fi­cul­ty.

“Get the filthy thing washed then, and bring it to the cab­in.”

Tom obeyed, and in a few min­utes brought in the bot­tle and laid it on the ta­ble, at which Lord Gle­nar­van and the Ma­jor were sit­ting ready with the cap­tain, and, of course La­dy He­le­na, for wom­en, they say, are al­ways a lit­tle cu­ri­ous. Ev­ery­thing is an event at sea. For a mo­ment they all sat silent, gaz­ing at this frail rel­ic, won­der­ing if it told the tale of sad dis­as­ter, or brought some tri­fling mes­sage from a frol­ic-​lov­ing sailor, who had flung it in­to the sea to amuse him­self when he had noth­ing bet­ter to do.

How­ev­er, the on­ly way to know was to ex­am­ine the bot­tle, and Gle­nar­van set to work with­out fur­ther de­lay, so care­ful­ly and minute­ly, that he might have been tak­en for a coro­ner mak­ing an in­quest.

He com­menced by a close in­spec­tion of the out­side. The neck was long and slen­der, and round the thick rim there was still an end of wire hang­ing, though eat­en away with rust. The sides were very thick, and strong enough to bear great pres­sure. It was ev­ident­ly of Cham­pagne ori­gin, and the Ma­jor said im­me­di­ate­ly, “That’s one of our Clic­quot’s bot­tles.”

No­body con­tra­dict­ed him, as he was sup­posed to know; but La­dy He­le­na ex­claimed, “What does it mat­ter about the bot­tle, if we don’t know where it comes from?”

“We shall know that, too, present­ly, and we may af­firm this much al­ready– it comes from a long way off. Look at those pet­ri­fac­tions all over it, these dif­fer­ent sub­stances al­most turned to min­er­al, we might say, through the ac­tion of the salt wa­ter! This waif had been toss­ing about in the ocean a long time be­fore the shark swal­lowed it.”

“I quite agree with you,” said Mc­Nabbs. “I dare say this frail con­cern has made a long voy­age, pro­tect­ed by this strong cov­er­ing.”

“But I want to know where from?” said La­dy Gle­nar­van.

“Wait a lit­tle, dear He­le­na, wait; we must have pa­tience with bot­tles; but if I am not much mis­tak­en, this one will an­swer all our ques­tions,” replied her hus­band, be­gin­ning to scrape away the hard sub­stances round the neck. Soon the cork made its ap­pear­ance, but much dam­aged by the wa­ter.

“That’s vex­ing,” said Lord Ed­ward, “for if pa­pers are in­side, they’ll be in a pret­ty state!”

“It’s to be feared they will,” said the Ma­jor.

“But it is a lucky thing the shark swal­lowed them, I must say,” added Gle­nar­van, “for the bot­tle would have sunk to the bot­tom be­fore long with such a cork as this.”

“That’s true enough,” replied John Man­gles, “and yet it would have been bet­ter to have fished them up in the open sea. Then we might have found out the road they had come by tak­ing the ex­act lat­itude and lon­gi­tude, and study­ing the at­mo­spher­ic and sub­ma­rine cur­rents; but with such a post­man as a shark, that goes against wind and tide, there’s no clew what­ev­er to the start­ing-​point.”

“We shall see,” said Gle­nar­van, gen­tly tak­ing out the cork. A strong odor of salt wa­ter per­vad­ed the whole sa­loon, and La­dy He­le­na asked im­pa­tient­ly: “Well, what is there?”

“I was right!” ex­claimed Gle­nar­van. “I see pa­pers in­side. But I fear it will be im­pos­si­ble to re­move them,” he added, “for they ap­pear to have rot­ted with the damp, and are stick­ing to the sides of the bot­tle.”

“Break it,” said the Ma­jor.

“I would rather pre­serve the whole if I could.”

“No doubt you would,” said La­dy He­le­na; “but the con­tents are more valu­able than the bot­tle, and we had bet­ter sac­ri­fice the one than the oth­er.”

“If your Lord­ship would sim­ply break off the neck, I think we might eas­ily with­draw the pa­pers,” sug­gest­ed John Man­gles.

“Try it, Ed­ward, try it,” said La­dy He­le­na.

Lord Gle­nar­van was very un­will­ing, but he found there was no al­ter­na­tive; the pre­cious bot­tle must be bro­ken. They had to get a ham­mer be­fore this could be done, though, for the stony ma­te­ri­al had ac­quired the hard­ness of gran­ite. A few sharp strokes, how­ev­er, soon shiv­ered it to frag­ments, many of which had pieces of pa­per stick­ing to them. These were care­ful­ly re­moved by Lord Gle­nar­van, and sep­arat­ed and spread out on the ta­ble be­fore the ea­ger gaze of his wife and friends.