We let them go some fifty yards in advance, and, preserving that distance between us, carefully watched their movements. For a considerable time they went wheeling about in every direction, always keeping well together, and moving to right or left as if all animated by one impulse.
All at once they left off wheeling about, and moved steadily forward in one direction, but so slowly and cautiously that they hardly seemed to move a fin.
The old huntsman, who was close to me, and under whose special charge I was advised to place myself, tapped on my arm: "He is not far off."
Advancing cautiously after our finny guides, it was not long before we perceived the dim outline of a gigantic shark suspended motionless in the water.
I confess to having experienced a most uncomfortable sensation as our diminishing distance revealed the stupendous proportions of this tiger of the sea.
The plucky little pack of pilot-fishes were soon alongside of him, and quitting their close formation, they distributed themselves on all sides of the unsuspecting brute. They darted at his head, his body, his fins, and especially at his eyes. Their vivacious attacks seemed rather to please the shark, who only showed signs of life by a slight quiver of his dorsal fin, or a languid movement of his dull but wicked-looking eye.
While the attention of the monster was thus occupied by his tiny teazers, the younger huntsman had crept up cautiously behind and beneath him, and on getting within a convenient distance he launched his harpoon at the fish's belly with such a sure aim that it buried itself over its projecting barbs in his body. At the same instant the previous apathy of the animal
