Page 260 - Travels in Arabia (Vol 2)_Neat

XII.] COAST OT ARABIA. 241

clination. Merely arming himself with a

knife, which was strung by a loop to his
wrist, he precipitated himself fearlessly to
the bottom.
We must not, I think, attach implicit cre­
dence to all we hear respecting men killing
sharks single-handed in the water, for they
possess prodigious strength and quickness of
vision, without which they could not dart on
the coral-fish; as, when hooked, the latter

flies out and plunges to the end of the line
with much violence. The shark is also re­

markable for its tenaciousness of life when
out of its native element. On one of the
banks near Jiddah the sailors hauled on board
a female fish, and, as she lay on the deck,
one of them struck her repeatedly with a
heavy handspike on the head. She was then
permitted to remain unmolested for a quarter
of an hour, when some of the seamen sug­
gested that she should be “ spritsail-yarded”
—an operation they accomplished by cutting
through the skin of the back, and thrusting

the stave of a cask through the aperture. She
bore all this without exhibiting any signs of
life; but, upon being again thrown into the
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