Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 182, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1912 — FROLIC ENDS IN TRAGEDY [ARTICLE]

FROLIC ENDS IN TRAGEDY

Friendly Play of Sea Monsters Turns to Bloody Battle When Shark Is Killed. New York.—The Caledonia, plowing its way through a bottle-green ocean, was sixty miles due east of Montauk Point. Suddenly dome one with keen eyesight espied the perennial commotion in the water just off the ship’s bows. All eyes were at once alert, expecting to be rewarded with a view of the usual death struggle between deep sea leviathans. To their utter amazement and delight, what should meet their wondering gaze but scores—aye, scores—of swordfish and sharks frolicking in friendly play aboutthe ship! The swordfish ran their swords beneath the bodies of the sharks and tossed them high in the air, then

deftly caught them and repeated the performance. The sharks, in turn, took playful nips at the swordfish and chased them all around the ship. This continued for an hour, when one of the swordfish erred in his judgment of distance and caught a shark on the point of his bony nose, piercing the shark and ending his career then and there. With the death of their schoolmate, the sharks, becoming Infuriated, turned upon the swordfish, and the battle which followed —from all accounts —-was indescribably horrible. One particular pair of fighters were watched by Purser Johnston, who said that the sword of the great fish broke off in ramming the side of the Caledonia after missing a vicious thrust at his enemy. Before the swordsman of the deep could save himself by flight the shark had killed and began to devour him.