Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1891 — Swordfish and Shark. [ARTICLE]

Swordfish and Shark.

" What strange thing has eona athwart my hawse in the last dozer years?” mused Capt. Carnes of the brig Mary, as he shifted his quid. “Well, I might tell you of a bit of ad venture that happened to my vessel one day among the Windward Island! of the Caribbean Sea. We were just to the east of the group, and about fifteen miles away, when there came i dead calm. The sea was like a mill pond, and the sun beat down like a ball of fiye. One of the men, who wai aloft for something, discovered a large shark prowling around the brig, and 1 gave the men permission to bait foi him. They baited the hook and tempted him, but he would not ever smell of the pork. He was a straightout man-eater, and he wanted sailor 01 nothing. He made two or, three circuits about the vessel, his dorsal fin showing above the water, and he then settled down off our port quarter, about twenty feet away,, and kept his eyes fastened on the heads of the men above the railing,

“Well, sir, there was something sc aggravating in that shark settling down there, as if determined to stay until some, of us tumbled overboard, that we made up our minds to drive him away after some fashion. We had a harpoon aboard, and one of the men used it to give the fish several bad gashes, but after each wound he'd make a circuit and come back to the old spot. You may rip a shark from stem to stern, and he won’t seem to mind the hurt. By and by the men got so hot that they asked leave to man the boat and either kill the grim devil or drive him away. I consented, and a sailor named Williams scrambled into the yawl as she swung at the davits to cast off when she was down. The falls had scarcely been manned when one of them parted, and the boat dropped stern down. The sailor was pitched ten feet away, and as he struck the water there was a yell from every man on the brig. He pitched right at the shark, and we expected to see him grabbed up in a second. Indeed, we all saw the fish whirl and make a rush, and as the sailor swam alongside and seized a rope a terrible combat began in the water. We knew that one of the fighters was the shark, but it was minutes before we made out that the other was a swordfish.

“I calculate that rumpus lasted all of fifteen minutes. They fought on the surface and under it, they circled and came back, they went under the brig and around her, and the sea was ohurned to perfect foam all the time. The affair finally ended by the shark turning belly up, as dead as a hammer, and I guess there wasn’t a foot of him which hadn’t felt a thrust of the ■word. He bled like a stuck hog, and was only fairly dead when the swordfish took a run for the brig. He backed off about fifty feet, and came full tilt, and, as true as I’m sitting here, he made her shiver as he struck. That sword of his struck good oak Elank, sheathed with copper, but nothig stopped it until it showed for six Inches in the hold. We saw him as he backed off, and knew that he had lost his weapon. It was a terrible hurt, and when a breeze sprang up and filled our sails he was still floundering around the shark’s body, seeming to have lost his compass points altogether. “On the way down to Trinidad the brig made considerable water, and when we came to unload her cargo we found the sWord sticking into her as I have told you. A portion of it was afterward carried to Boston, and is probably there yet. ”