Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-08-17
MIXING WITH SHARKS

"A seventh son Oh d Jap fortune teiier ana
zodiac spieer once told met was under a
green ambrose silk hood-tent in Nagasaki.
and as the stars were his bosom hammock
mates, l gave. him half a yen to name me
the standing lights aloft that were my par
tcular lookouts. according to his chart-this
crinkly-fsced old Jap sski-souse-and the
face Of him was like a wilted waffie-told
me that mine. allow and aloft was the Sign
OF the Fish; which. seeing that 1 was fair
ishly sober at the time. and that he him.
SELF was some three parts saki-orunk.
struck me as being a bum half a yen's
WORTH" said the grizzled ships writer Of
many cruises
II was about to hand him a clout and
tell him what thought of that kind Of
-ciairvoyance. or what ye-call-it, when Il
occurred to me what he meant and that he
was right. He wasn't trying to tell me that
l was a deep-sea soak. but that me and
the fish had already mixed It up a lot anS
that We were due to get together some
more and right frequent.
And that showed that he wasn't such
swab Of a star spieler. even II he was so
logged with the oozy rice juice that he
went to sleep on my hands before / could
back out Of the green-androse silk hood
tent. The fish that he meant was the
SidfA anu, ny way Oh making the TemaTkS
of the saki-soused old Jap good, the sharks
have been after me ever since of and on,
coming and going.
In fact, they've got so familiar with me
that I'm not afraiu Of the ornery muckers
any more. I'm just about much afraid
of your sea tiger now you'd be of a
ships kitten tapping condensed milk out OF
a Wafdroom saucer on the galley deck
only. of course. I'll do lot more moving
when the sharks around and looking me
over than l will in the presence of the
kitten.
The first time a shark ever got frolic
some with me was when l was a tike of
prentice on the old Swatara. down in the
harbor of Callao. l was a starboard side
cleaner. and one afternoon l was cooked in
swing. swabbing paint. and with my bare
feet a-twiddling not above twelfth of a
fathom from the water.
"All of a sudden l noticed little glitter
ing, goggleeyed and snoutnosed fish a
rubbering around a lot in the little space
OF water directly below where my feet were
swinging. He looked so perky and fresh
and impudent that l was for heaving my
cake of salt water soap at him. but then
got to figuring that the cat could look at
the king and that it wasn't doing any
ha rm to have this little fish watch me pol
sh off my cleaning station and so let him
look. and presently l became so busy In
trying to light up a gallery cornshuck
cigarette without the officer Of the deck
spotting me that forgot about him.
Then old shellback of a gunners
mate appeared at the starboard gangway
and looked down to where 1 was making
believe l was working.
Shin up, you whe!p. the Old gunners
mate bawled to me through the funnel that
he made of his hands. and just as l grabbed
the port rope swinging the bo'suns chair
and started to handover- hand it to the rail
there was a shower Of salt water that
sounded like the busting of a waterspout
right below me-and l had my first view of
a belly-up man-eater.
He jumped about half fathom out of
the water for me- but l already had a
clutch on the rail. and he missed me by
little. But as long as l was a side-cleaner
L never swabbed paint from a bosun's
chair after that with bare feet. My bare
feet then were the bait and that poor little
cuss OF an ensiaved pilot fish had guided his
master and protector. the shark in my d.
rection.
About three years after that l got more
shark education at Papeete on the Island
of Tahiti. A gang of the hands, was put
off my premiership then and already a
ships writer-got jealous Of the swimming
stunts of bunch of the gallery French
jabbering natives one day, and so we got
the permission of the officer of the deck to
lower away the longboat. and We sped her
to the coral beach, stripped and went into
the water ourselves-about eighteen of us.
1T was very hot and gummy weather.
and we were thinking more about getting
cool than of sharks, although thousand
Of them assembled around the ship every
time the cook dumped a bucket OF galley
refuse through the swill tube Anyhow,
we were all pretty young.
In addition to being young. | was chest
Ter than I've ever been since, because there
wasn't a man boy on board the old
hooker that could teach me anything about
swimming. That's how it came that. as
soon as we jumped into the water on the
Papeete beach that day 1 proceeded to out
swim all the rest, just to show EN-.
Il didn't even turn to look back until
aho
only reason l turned around then was be-
cause l heard lot of noise from the beach
When | turned l saw about a hundred
naked natives and all of my ships COM
panions lined up on the beach at the edge
of the water, jumping up and down and
Hacking their arms at me and Jelllng with
all their might. But something else that
saw was a lot more important to me than
all of that
There were, as it seemed to me. about
million huge, wet and shiny shark fms be-
tween me and the beach. Some OF them
weren't more than ten yards from me Inc
fins were moving slowly on the surface OF
the gently heaving water.
We'll | could see my pipe-out In pialn
view then. 1 felt kind o reproachfui TO-
ward the scapular and Agnus Del 1 wore
around my neck-they sure ought to've kept
me out of trouble like that, l thought.
stopped and tread water and began 10 slap
the surface of the water with all the might
of my hands
81 noticed that when slapped the water
particularly hard the sharks that were
neares. to me sort Of edged back ana CIR
cled at a greater distance from me- so L
kept right on slapping 1t with all the
vlciousness l knew.
We'll the sharks were waiting or me
to get tired; that's all. They knew that l
wouldn't start right back through them,
and they knew, too. that l couldn't swim
right ahead a few thousand leagues to the
Carolnes or the Marquesas or the FILLS.
and so they were content to take 1t easy,
each figuring upon getting what was COM
ing to him when my cash-in arrived.
Forty or fifty natives put after me in
one of those sixty -foot-long and two-foot-
wide canoes with the outrigger arrange
ment and in the bow of the canoe was an
old lime juicer of a quartermaSter from
British trading schooner in the harbor.
Splash, an keep a-splashin, blast yr
blazin' heyes fr a Yankee pup-heejit!
baWled the old lime-juicer to me as the
canoe approached where l was in the mid
die of the half-arc of waiting sharks, and
with that | began to splash and kick the
water like sea skate fouled in the mud
hook chains.
You may believe that l was some rat
tied but as the canoe approached [ noticed
that all of the natives who weren't helping
to pull the canoe were leaning over the
side and Shaping and churning the water
with all their might and making all of the
noise out of their countenances that they
knew how to make. And that's what Set