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Updated: May 18, 2025
Johnny saw the monster barely in time; for just as he sprang up with a cry of affright, and fell backwards into the boat the shark's shovel-nose shot four feet above water at our stern, his jaws snapping together as he disappeared again, with a sound like the springing of a powerful steel-trap.
A shark, like a midshipman, is generally very hungry; but in the rare cases when he is not in good appetite he sails slowly up to the bait, smells at it, and gives it a poke with his shovel-nose, turning it over and over.
The head upon its lithe, round neck was poised motionless, but set as with a hair-spring. The flat, pointed face was turned upon me, so that I could see a patch of white upon the throat. Evidently the snake had just sloughed an old skin, for the sunlight gleamed iridescent on the shining jet scales. It was not a large head; it lacked the shovel-nose and the heavy, horrid jaws of the rattle-snake.
The shovel-nose cat, really a deformed kind of freshwater sturgeon, with a great fan-shaped membranous plate jutting out from his nose like a bowsprit, jumps all day in the quiet places with mighty splashing sounds, as though a horse had fallen into the water.
Bob remembered the lantern, and Jack put in an ax. They did not take much food; they could buy that of farmers or in Port William. They got a "gang," or, as they called it, a "trot-line," to lay down in the river for catfish, perch, and shovel-nose sturgeon, for there was no game-law then. Bob provided an iron pot to cook the fish in, and Jack a frying-pan and tea-kettle.
Of these the Bone and Oil is made; the Oil being the Blubber, or oily Flesh, or Fat of that Fish boil'd. These differ not only in Colour, some being pied, others not, but very much in shape, one being call'd a Bottle-Nosed Whale, the other a Shovel-Nose, which is as different as a Salmon from a Sturgeon. There is another sort of these Whales, or great Fish, though not common.
Though small in size, they are large in appetite and fierce in nature. Like savage dogs, they hunt in packs, waging war against the Whiting, Herring and other fish. There are several kinds of these small Sharks, known as Spur-dog, Smooth Hound, Greater-spotted and Lesser-spotted Dog-fish, and Tope. And you will hear fishermen call them by such names as "Rig," "Robin Huss," and "Shovel-nose."
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