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Updated: June 8, 2025
The latter point was almost stationary, while both the former were moving towards it in converging lines, fast as shark and man could swim. The situation was easily explained. The zygaena, hitherto holding its course ahead of the Catamaran, had become apprised of the catastrophe occurring among the crew.
He had, fortunately, a large, sharp sheath-knife sticking in his girdle; he drew it, and keeping his eye on the shark, he struck out so as to gain a position rather behind the creature's head, which was turned from him. At the same moment that Nub caught sight of the zygaena the mate also saw it; he fully expected that it would dash at the black and seize him in its dreadful jaws.
The plunge which Snowball had made as he sprang out into the water had caused the zygaena to swerve from its course; and for some moments it swam towards him, as if determined upon changing the object of its attack; but whether not liking the looks of the Coromantee or frayed by his bold attitude in making directly towards it, it shied back into its former course, and kept on towards the others.
It was the "hammer-head" shark, or balance-fish, so-called from the peculiar formation of its head, the zygaena of the naturalists, and one of the most voracious of that devouring tribe to which genetically it belongs.
It was that they might be espied and followed by some of the sharks which they had seen in the neighbourhood; but as they got further away from the spot, he began to hope that they had escaped them, and that the creatures were too much occupied with the carcasses of the whale and the zygaena to follow them.
Even Snowball, who, after giving the coup de grace to the zygaena, had struck direct towards the Catamaran, even he, unencumbered by aught save his wet shirt and trousers, although easily passing the others in his course, did not appear to gain an inch upon the runaway raft.
It was indeed an enormous specimen of the hideous zygaena, or hammer-headed shark, so frequently observed about the coast of the South Sea islands, and scarcely less voracious and formidable than the terrible white shark, the sailor's hated foe.
It might be supposed that the shark would have rushed instantaneously upon its antagonist, regardless of aught save making a meal of him. But no, the zygaena, notwithstanding its great voracity, like the rest of its tribe, is endowed with certain instincts of caution.
The new direction entered upon by the swimmer soon changed the relative position of all parties. The triangle became resolved into a right line, the shark at one extremity, the sailor with his charge at the other, Snowball midway between! By this change in the position of the parties, the zygaena had lost its advantage.
When it pleased the Coromantee to dismount from his slippery saddle, the zygaena floated by his side, a carcass stained with its own blood, that for fathoms around encrimsoned the azure waters of the ocean! As we have said, little William, standing near the stern of the Catamaran, had watched the spectacle with suspended breath.
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