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CHAPTER 1
FROM "THE HEATHEN"
— By Jack London
Stranded after a hurricane-caused shipwreck on an island in the South Seas with a native man who saved him from drowning in the wreck, the narrator of Jack London's classic story "The Heathen" becomes his savior's friend for life. They "perform the ceremony of exchanging names," and we learn the narrator is Otoo and calls the native man Charley. The narrator says of the title character, "And he knew nothing of common Christian morality. All the people on Bora Bora were Christians; but he was a heathen, the only unbeliever on the island, a gross materialist, who believed that when he died he was dead. He believed merely in fair play and square dealing. Petty meanness, in his code, was almost as serious as wanton homicide; and I do believe that he respected a murderer more than a man given to small practices." For seventeen years, they stayed together in a brotherhood — until, as London writes: " ... the end came, as the end must come to all human associations." The end for Otoo/Charley, the heathen, was a horrible shark attack during which he sacrificed himself to protect his now compatriot or brother. What follows is an excerpt from the story, first published in Everyman's Magazine in 1910.
It occurred in the Solomons, where our wildest work had been done in the wild young days, and where we were once more — principally on a holiday, incidentally to look after our holdings on Florida Island and to look over the pearling possibilities of the Mboli Pass. We were lying at Savo, having run in to trade for curios.
Now, Savo is alive with sharks. The custom of the woolly-heads of burying their dead in the sea did not tend to discourage the sharks from making the adjacent waters a hangout. It was my luck to be coming aboard in a tiny, overloaded, native canoe, when the thing capsized. There were four woolly-heads and myself in it, or rather, hanging to it. The schooner was a hundred yards away.
I was just hailing for a boat when one of the woolly-heads began to scream. Holding on to the end of the canoe, both he and that portion of the canoe were dragged under several times. Then he loosed his clutch and disappeared. A shark had got him.
The three remaining n*****s tried to climb out of the water upon the bottom of the canoe. I yelled and cursed and struck at the nearest with my fist, but it was no use. They were in a blind funk. The canoe could barely have supported one of them. Under the three it upended and rolled sidewise, throwing them back into the water.
I abandoned the canoe and started to swim toward the schooner, expecting to be picked up by the boat before I got there. One of the n*****s elected to come with me, and we swam along silently, side by side, now and again putting our faces into the water and peering about for sharks. The screams of the man who stayed by the canoe informed us that he was taken. I was peering into the water when I saw a big shark pass directly beneath me.
He was fully sixteen feet in length. I saw the whole thing. He got the woolly-head by the middle, and away he went, the poor devil, head, shoulders, and arms out of the water all the time, screeching in a heart-rending way. He was carried along in this fashion for several hundred feet, when he was dragged beneath the surface.
I swam doggedly on, hoping that that was the last unattached shark. But there was another. Whether it was one that had attacked the natives earlier, or whether it was one that had made a good meal elsewhere, I do not know. At any rate, he was not in such haste as the others. I could not swim so rapidly now, for a large part of my effort was devoted to keeping track of him. I was watching him when he made his first attack. By good luck I got both hands on his nose, and, though his momentum nearly shoved me under, I managed to keep him off. He veered clear, and began circling about again. A second time I escaped him by the same maneuver. The third rush was a miss on both sides. He sheered at the moment my hands should have landed on his nose, but his sandpaper hide (I had on a sleeveless undershirt) scraped the skin off one arm from elbow to shoulder.
By this time I was played out, and gave up hope. The schooner was still two hundred feet away. My face was in the water, and I was watching him maneuver for another attempt, when I saw a brown body pass between us. It was Otoo.
"Swim for the schooner, master!" he said. And he spoke gayly, as though the affair was a mere lark. "I know sharks. The shark is my brother."
I obeyed, swimming slowly on, while Otoo swam about me, keeping always between me and the shark, foiling his rushes and encouraging me.
"The davit tackle carried away, and they are rigging the falls," he explained, a minute or so later, and then went under to head off another attack.
By the time the schooner was thirty feet away I was about done for. I could scarcely move. They were heaving lines at us from on board, but they continually fell short. The shark, finding that it was receiving no hurt, had become bolder. Several times it nearly got me, but each time Otoo was there just the moment before it was too late. Of course, Otoo could have saved himself any time. But he stuck by me.
"Goodbye, Charley! I'm finished!" I just managed to gasp. I knew that the end had come, and that the next moment I should throw up my hands and go down.
But Otoo laughed in my face, saying: "I will show you a new trick. I will make that shark feel sick!" He dropped in behind me, where the shark was preparing to come at me.
"A little more to the left!" he next called out. "There is a line there on the water. To the left, master — to the left!"
I changed my course and struck out blindly. I was by that time barely conscious. As my hand closed on the line I heard an exclamation from on board. I turned and looked. There was no sign of Otoo. The next instant he broke surface. Both hands were off at the wrist, the stumps spouting blood.
"Otoo!" he called softly. And I could see in his gaze the love that thrilled in his voice.
Then, and then only, at the very last of all our years, he called me by that name.
"Goodbye, Otoo!" he called.
Then he was dragged under, and I was hauled aboard, where I fainted in the captain's arms.
And so passed Otoo, who saved me and made me a man, and who saved me in the end. We met in the maw of a hurricane, and parted in the maw of a shark, with seventeen intervening years of comradeship, the like of which I dare to assert has never befallen two men, the one brown and the other white. If Jehovah be from His high place watching every sparrow fall, not least in His kingdom shall be Otoo, the one heathen of Bora Bora.
It's curious that Bora Bora is a setting in London's story, as so-called primitive cultures such as those in French Polynesia or the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific are known for deifying sharks. Sharks can inspire devotion among human cultures — though these beliefs are often grounded in violence and brutality. A story in the Washington Post from 1909 tell us more:
In view of the wide distribution of sharks and their strength and ferocity, qualities which appealed to the savage mind, it is not strange that the cult of shark worship should have arisen. This worship is especially common in the South Seas, where sharks are very numerous.
In the Solomon Islands, living sacred objects are chiefly sharks, alligators, snakes. Sharks are in all these islands very often thought to be the abode of ghosts, as natives will at times before their death announce that they will appear as sharks. Afterward any shark remarkable for size or color which is observed to haunt a certain shore or rock is taken to be some one's ghost, and the name of the deceased is given to it.
Such a one was Sautahimatawa at Ulawa, a dreaded man-eater, to which offerings of porpoise teeth were made. At Saa certain food, such as cocoanuts from certain trees, is reserved to feed such a ghost shark, and there are certain men of whom it is known that after death they will be sharks. These, therefore, are allowed to eat such food in the sacred place. In Saa and in Ulawa when a sacred shark had attempted to seize a man and he had escaped, the people would be so much afraid of the shark's anger that they would throw the man back in the sea to be drowned. These sharks also were thought to aid in catching bonito, for taking which supernatural power was necessary. In the Banks Islands a shark may be a tangaros, a sort of familiar spirit, or the abode of one. Some years ago Manurwar, son of Mala, the chief man in Vanua Lava, had such a shark. He had given money to a Manwo man to send it to him. It was very tame and would come up to him when he went down to the beach at Nawono and follow along in the surf as he walked along the shore. In the New Hebrides some men have the power, the natives believe, of changing themselves into sharks.
The Samoan native believed that his gods appeared in some visible incarnation, and the particular thing in which it was in the habit of appearing was to him an object of veneration. Many worshiped the shark in this way, and while they would freely partake of the gods of others, they felt that death would be the penalty should they eat their own god. The god was supposed to avenge the insult by taking up his abode in the offender's body and causing to generate there the very thing which he had eaten until it produced death. ... A shark named Moaalli was famous as the marine god of Molokai and Oahu. Many temples were built on promontories in his honor, and to them the first fruits of the fisherman's labors were dedicated. When victims were required to be sacrificed in honor of this dog, or he was supposed to be hungry, the priests would sally forth and ensnare with a rope any one they could catch. The victim was immediately strangled, cut in pieces, and thrown to the voracious animal.
Ukanipo was the shark god of Hawaii. He seems to have been of a compassionate nature at times, as there are extant several traditions showing kindnesses he had done to certain of his devotees, especially loves in distress.
All the shark gods were not beneficent, however. Apukohai and Uhumakaikai were evil shark gods who infested the waters of Kauai, and the fisherman were compelled to propitiate them with offerings.
Should a fisherman, by an unlucky accident, injure or destroy a shark held sacred by his family, he was bound to make a feast to the god.
Several of the African coast tribes worship the shark. Three or four times in the year they celebrate the festival of the shark, which is done in this wise: They all row out in their boats to the middle of the river, where they invoke, with the strangest ceremonies, the protection of the great shark. They offer to him poultry and goats in order to satisfy his sacred appetite. But this is nothing; an infant is every year sacrificed to the monster, which has been feted and nourished for the sacrifice from its birth to the age of 10. On the day of the fete it is bound to a post on a sandy point at low water; as the tide rises the child may utter cries of terror, but they are of no avail, as it is abandoned to the waves and the sharks soon arrive to finish its agony and thus permit it to enter into heaven.
Humanity's fascination with sharks sometimes leads us in inexplicable directions with our beliefs and myths.
* * *
Several types of sharks are known for their frequent human attacks. Of course, these sharks live and inhabit areas where people swim, dive, vacation, and frolic in the ocean, so it's usually a case of people invading their seascape, and the shark has a relatively easy target. The triple threat, or unholy trinity, of great white, bull shark, and tiger shark are the most common culprits of attacks on humans, according to research compiled through decades; a close fourth is the oceanic whitetip. They each belong to the family known as requiem sharks and are written about in some detail in this book. In many cases, the shipwrecks covered here happened in the deep ocean, the prime hunting ground of oceanic whitetips.
The great white (of Jaws fame) is the reigning horror of the seas, known for brutal attacks on its prey, be they humans, seals, or any other warm-blooded creature. The tiger shark is another of the maritime marauders, also responsible for the most attacks on humans. Rounding out the list is the bull shark.
The Florida Museum of Natural History categorizes "unprovoked shark attacks" on swimmers and waders; surface recreationalists, entering or exiting water; and divers. According to information from the Florida Museum of Natural History's International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida, in 2015 surfers and others engaged in board sports were most often involved with shark attacks. "Surfers have been the most-affected user group in recent decades, the probable result of the large amount of time spent by people engaged in a provocative activity (kicking of feet, splashing of hands, and 'wipeouts') in an area commonly frequented by sharks, the surf zone," museum documents say. The museum's history is as follows: "Established in 1958, [the museum] is administered ... under the auspices of the American Elasmobranch Society, the world's foremost international organization of scientists studying sharks, skates, and rays." They recommend, if attacked, for the victim to react immediately: "If one is attacked by a shark, we advise a proactive response. Hitting a shark on the nose, ideally with an inanimate object, usually results in the shark temporarily curtailing its attack. One should try to get out of the water at this time." They say that blows to the shark's snout may dissuade the attack, and if the shark bites, go for the sensitive gills and eyes. "One should not act passively if under attack as sharks respect size and power."
The organization administers a database, studied by biological researchers, with more than 5,700 individual investigations from the mid-1500s to today. The ISAF curator is George H. Burgess; you can search for the group on Facebook and Twitter. (Responding to an email from me asking for comments about shark attacks, Mr. Burgess replied, "No offense intended, but I really have no interest in involvement with projects that sensationalize sharks.")
CHAPTER 2
A MAN EATING SHARK
The Story a Mississippi River Pilot Tells of His Own Seeing.
Here's a story about a man overboard, printed in the Burlington Free Press (Vermont), from the New Orleans TimesDemocrat, on August 29, 1900:
Will a shark bite a living human being? The question has been debated hundreds of times and came up for discussion among a little party at a suburban resort. "In spite of the current legend," said one of the group, "I don't believe sharks will attack a living person. I have spent my life near the sea and have heard a hundred stories of swimmers being killed or bitten by the monsters, but all the tales were either at second hand or were so vague they would never have passed for evidence in court."
"Well, sit," said another of the party, "I believe sharks do kill men, and I have the best of reasons for my belief. I witnessed such a tragedy with my own eyes." The speaker was Captain McLaughlin, one of the oldest and best known bar pilots in the Mississippi river service.
"It happened 21 years ago," said the captain when pressed for details, "but the circumstances are as distinct in my mind as if it had occurred only yesterday. I was out looking for ships with my partner, Captain Tom Wilson, and the usual crew, and about 12 miles off South Pass we sighted a large sailing vessel which proved to be the Zephyr, from Bath, in charge of Captain Switzer. There was a rival pilot boat nearby, and we both made a rush for the ship to get the job of taking her in.
"Our party was nearest, and Captain Wilson and two sailors put off in a small boat to go aboard, but in their hurry they made a miscalculation and were struck by the bow and capsized. It all happened in a flash, but Wilson and one of the sailors were lucky enough to get hold of the overturned boat and hang on. The other sailor was thrown some distance away into the water.
"He was a big, brawny, six foot Swede named Gus Ericsson, and when we saw him come up, one of the crew tossed him a circular life buoy, which he seized almost immediately. The buoy was amply sufficient to sustain him, and he put his arms across it and held himself out of the water fully breast high. We had another small boat and started at once to pick up the three men, making for Ericsson first.
"When we were less than 100 feet away, I saw a gigantic tiger shark rise and start toward him, and at the next instant the poor fellow shot down out of sight, life buoy and all, like a man going through a trap. We were so horrified that we simply sat still and stared, and what seemed to be two or three minutes elapsed. Then the life buoy suddenly appeared. It must have risen from a great depth, because it bounded at least four feet into the air and fell back with a splash. Of Ericsson we never saw a trace. He went into that shark's jaw as surely as two and two make four.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Unspeakable Horror"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Joseph B. Healy.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
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