Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 1525
Sometimes when it was windy outside we ran in to fish around the islands or along the shoal west shore of the bay. Straight across from camp there was a high bluff covered with heavy growth of timber. From this a flat rocky reef ran out into the bay. Our man, Bill Lawler, the market fisherman I had engaged, took us often to this particular spot to fish for sharks. Some of the shark tales he told were incredible. But I learned to credit all of them.
Why a school of gray nurse sharks should hang around that shoal reef was a mystery to me. It cleared up, however, and seemed as natural as any other thing pertaining to the sea. We went there several times and chummed, (burley, they call this way of attracting sharks by cutting up bait or fish), without getting a single bite. Bill said the cool rainy weather accounted for the lack of sharks, and I could well believe him.
One warm still afternoon we hit it just right; and that afternoon must be recorded in my memory and in my fishing notes as one never to forget. Fishing for sharks is one thing: fishing for man-eating sharks, one of the most ferocious species, is entirely another.
I had seen the two gray nurse sharks in the Aquarium at the Sydney Zoo. I had watched them for hours. They really had beauty, if line and contour lending speed and savagery, can have such a thing. To my surprise the gray nurse had a longer, sharper nose than even the mako. I made a bet with myself that he could move fast in the water. I found out, too. I was surprised, also, to see that the gray nurse had no gray color in the water. He was a dark greenish tan.
We anchored the Avalon over the ridge, about five hundred yards out from shore, and began to chum. We had a couple of boxes full of fish that from its odor should have attracted sharks all the way from Sydney. Our other boat, the camera outfit, chose a spot half a mile below us, not a very good place, Bill said.
I put a bait over on my big tackle, and settled myself comfortably to wait. It was very pleasant, and grew more beautiful as the afternoon waned. Two hours passed, during which we chummed all the while, without having a strike. An oily slick drifted away from our boat for a mile. I had about decided there were no gray nurse sharks in the bay, when I had a bite. It was a gentle, slow pull, not at all what I expected from a notorious shark.
“It’s a gray nurse,” avowed Bill.
“Yeah?” I replied, doubtfully. “Okay! We’ll hand it to him.”
Whereupon I laid back with my heavy tackle for all I was worth. I hooked a fish, all right, and made ready for a run. But this one did not run. He came toward the boat. The men hauled up anchor and started the engine. We drifted while I most curiously applied myself to the task of whipping this shark, if it were one. He was heavy and strong, and quick as a flash. But he did not try to go places. He kept around and under the boat.
In due course I hauled him up, and what was my surprise when I saw a long symmetrical silver-gray shark shape. He looked about eight feet long and fairly thick. Presently I had a good look at his head and then his eyes. I have had fish see me from the water, but this fellow’s gaze was different. Pure cold, murderous cruelty shone in that black eye. It made me shiver. I did not fool any longer with him.
Peter gaffed the gray nurse and held him while Bill slipped a rope over his tail. For his size, about three hundred pounds, he surely made a commotion in the water. After a bit Peter untied my leader from my line and let it hang. The shark hung head down, rolling and jerking.
“Pete, if these gray nurse sharks don’t run away after being hooked, this tackle is too heavy,” I said.
“Right-o. I was figuring that. The Cox nine and thirty thread line ought to do.”
“Well,” added Bill, grimly, “I can tell you they don’t run away.”
We went back to our anchorage and I went on fishing with the lighter rig while the men chummed. Suddenly Bill said he saw one in the water. I thought I, too, caught a gray shadow flash. But in a moment after that I had another of those queer slow gentle strikes.
“Gosh!” I exclaimed. “I’ll bet this bird doesn’t work so slow when he’s after a man.”
“Quick as lightning!” replied Bill.
The shark swam under the boat. I hooked him, and he acted precisely as had the first. But with the lighter tackle I could handle him better. He turned out to be heavy and strong, making it necessary for me to put on my harness. Then we had it out, hard and fast. Nevertheless I was able to do little with him. Had he chosen to run off we would have had to up anchor and go after him. But he chose to circle the boat and swim under it, giving me plenty of trouble. When I discovered the gray nurse wouldn’t run I put on some drag and pitched into him. Several times I had a glimpse of something long and gray, like a ghost of a fish. In half an hour I had him coming. I did not see him clearly, however, until Peter had heaved on the leader. Then! what a thrill and a start! This one appeared a monster, eleven feet longs thick as a barrel, huge fins all over him, veritably a terrible engine of destruction. He would have weighed eight hundred pounds. Peter held the leader while Bill gaffed him. Then there was hell. The shark threw the gaff and bit through the leader in what appeared a single action.
“Oh, Peter!” I protested, in grievous disappointment. “He wasn’t ready. Why didn’t you let him go?”
Peter looked mad. Bill said not to mind, that there were more. This reassured me, and I asked for another leader. They were all twenty feet or more long, too long, but we had to use them.
“Look down there!” called Bill as I threw out my bait.
I did not look, because my bait had hardly sunk to the bottom, which was only three fathoms, when I had another of those slow electrifying tugs. When I hooked this gray nurse he nearly jerked the rod away from me and the rod-socket. By this time I was getting angry. I went after this one hammer and tongs. His action induced me to think he was trying to get to the boat and kill me. He never swam a dozen yards from where I sat. I put the wood on him, as we call hauling hard with the rod, and eventually whipped him and brought him up to the gaff. He nearly drowned me. And the boys were ringing wet and mad as wet hens. When Peter tied this one alongside the other they began to fight.
We rigged up another leader and I went at it again. This time Bill saw one before I threw my bait in. “Look down,” he directed, and pointed.
By peering over into the green water I saw long wavering shapes. Sharks! Gray nurse sharks, some of them nearly twelve feet long, swimming around over the chum we had distributed.
“My word! What a sight!” I ejaculated.
“Be careful the next one doesn’t jerk you overboard,” warned Bill.
“What’d they do?”
“Tear you to pieces!”
I well believed that, and I proceeded to fasten the snap below the reel so the rod could not be pulled away from the chair. In less than ten seconds after my bait disappeared I had a strike, and in another second I was fast again. It required about a quarter of an hour to lick the next one, around three hundred pounds in weight. We got him, tied him alongside his comrade; and his arrival started another fight.
The next two severed my leader, one at the gaff and the other was cut clean about the middle of the fight. That required other new leaders. This last was put on by Bill and my bait thrown overboard, when we heard a hard thumping behind us. Peter, the scalawag, had dropped a hook down on a heavy cord, and he was fast to a shack. He got the end of the leader up. The shark was a whopper and he roared around on the surface and banged against the boat.
“Help! Help!” yelled Peter.
Bill ran to his assistance just as I had another strike. In a twinkling I was hooked to my heaviest gray nurse. He gave me a very hard battle. I needed my heavy outfit on him. But I was getting him well under control when Peter’s shark swam under the boat and fouled my leader with his. In the mêlée that ensued Peter’s shark broke away. I worked on mine awhile longer before I trusted him to Pete and Bill, whose blood was up and who had a lust to kill these man-eaters. No doubt mine was up, too, because I would have caught those devils until I was used up. This gray nurse was my largest to land. He weighed around five hundred pounds. When they tied him, head down, tail up, next to the other three, there was another convulsion. The boat cantled over and I had to hold on. Four gray nurse sharks in a row! And all possessed of devils! They did not appear to be sick or weak. They just fought.
“Peter, for Pete’s sake let up on that hand-line stuff,” I begged.
“Like hob I will,” repeated my boatman.
“But you’ll only foul my line.”
“No matter. We’ll ketch ‘em.”
And he had hold of another in less than ten seconds, even while Bill was baiting my hook. This time I watched. And I grasped that Peter would not give the sharks an inch of line. He sweat and swore and held on like grim death. The hook pulled out. Then I stood up to peer over the gunwale. Sharks thick as fence pickets!
But I could not see clearly. A few were small and many were about ten feet long, and several were very large. I wanted one of the biggest. My next was a smaller one, however, and I soon dragged him up. Peter had one on, too, and could not help us. Bill held the leader and the shark while I gaffed it. What a strange all-satisfying sensation, as the steel went in! But of course I was wholly primitive at the moment. The shark gave a wag and the gaff handle hit me on the head. I went down, not for the count, but to bounce up furious.
“Put a rope over his tail,” yelled Bill.
“Don’t do that,” ordered Peter, aghast.
“Mind your own business,” I replied. “Looks like you had your hands full.”
Grasping up a tail rope, I widened the noose to bend over the gunwale and try to lasso that sweeping tail. I got the noose over, but before I could draw it tight he flipped it off. He bit at my hands and swept them aside as if they were paper. I was, drenched to the skin. Then he hit me a resounding smack on the cheek and temple.. Hurt? I was never so hurt in my life. Nor mad! I bent lower, grim and desperate.
“Look out!” yelled Bill. And before I could move he let go gaff and leader, and dragged me up. I had a glimpse of a gray flash, a cruel pointed nose. One of the devils had made a pass at me.
“My God!...Bill, did that shark...?” I gasped.
“He did. Grab the rod and pull your shark back...Afraid I’ve lost the gaff.”
While I was pumping and winding my shark back Peter broke the heavy cord on the one he had hooked. That made him madder than ever. Bill ran forward to recover the gaff, which came out of the shark and floated up.
“I’ll get one or bust,” sang out Peter.
“This is a swell way to get rid of leaders,” I replied. “But go to it. This will never happen again.”
In less than a minute I was fast to another, and Pete’s yell assured me he was, too.
Then things happened so quickly, and I was so confused with blood lust to kill sharks, and the excitement of the sport, that for a space I could not tell what was going on. There was tremendous exertion and much hoarse shouting, and especially a terrific splashing maelstrom when both my shark and the one Peter had hooked got tangled up with the four wicked ones we had tied to the boat.
That was a mess. It must be understood that the four live sharks were tied on the opposite side of the boat from which I was hanging on to the one I had hooked. My rod was bent double, mostly under the water. I had hold of my line with both gloved hands.
The men saved my shark, a good ten-footer, and lost Peter’s, which he said was a whale. This time Peter cut his hand on the leader, and therefore let up on his hand-line stuff. He had lost four. This helped matters somewhat, for the next and sixth one I hooked was not so hard to land. When he had been tied up on my side of the boat, the men tried to call me off. I indeed was spent and panting.
“Not on your life!” I yelled. “Not while they’ll bite and I can lick ‘em.”
“They’re thinning out,” said Bill, gazing deep into the water. “But there’s a big one, if you can get hold of him...”
Marvelous to relate, I did, and he felt as if he was the granddad of that school of gray nurse sharks. He kept away from the boat for a while. He even came up, so that I could see all his wonderful silver-gray shape, his many fins, his gleaming eye and terrible shining teeth. This one was close to twelve feet long. He circled the stern, weaved to and fro, went under us time and again; in fact, he tried everything but to swim away. That was the strange thing. I could not understand it, unless he wanted to stay there to kill the thing which had him.
The sun was setting gold and blazing behind us on the wooded bluff. There were glorious lights and shadows on the Toll Gates. The water had a sheen of red, beautiful, though very significant of that afternoon’s fight with man-eaters.
I was sure of this big one. Which conceit was foolish. I worked hard on him. I stopped him, or thought I had, time and again. All of a sudden, when he was almost under me, he made a quick lunge. I heard snaps. I felt released from a mighty pull. My tip, line, and harness strap all broke at once, and I fell back in the cockpit.
Next morning we hung my six gray nurse sharks on our tripod on the beach. I never felt such satisfaction and justification as that spectacle afforded me.
They were sleek, shiny gray, lean and wolfish, yet somehow had a fascinating beauty. The largest two weighed nearly five hundred pounds each.
Their noses and small eyes and curved teeth fascinated me most. There were six rows of these long curved teeth. Under the first row was the second, ready to bend a new tooth up when one was lost. It horrified me to think how often on Australian beaches this engine of destruction had buried such teeth in human flesh. Never again for one of these six, I thought, grimly! I’d rather catch and kill such bad sharks than land the gamest sporting fish that swims.
Lastly the many broad fins on these sharks nonplused me. There was a reason for them, but I could not figure it out at such short notice.
I regarded this catch as one of the greatest, and certainly the most worthy, that I ever made. And it was not until afterwards that I realized the hazard of the game, and that I had really not appreciated being in a den of blood-thirsty man-eaters. But instead of making me cautious I grew only the bolder, fierce to hook and fight the largest one I could find.
CHAPTER VII
ANY BOOK ON the outdoors, at least any one of mine, should have as much as possible to say about trees, birds, and shells.
Our camp here is situated on a crescent-shaped bay, an offshoot of Bateman Bay, and it is singularly satisfying. All day and all night the surf is omnipresent, sometimes softly lapping the sand, at others crawling in with its white ripples, to break and seethe up the beach, rolling pebbles and shells with a tinkling music, and now and again rolling in with grand boom and roar, to crash on the strand and drag the gravel back with a mournful scream. A sad emotion-provoking sound on any shore!
Every tide leaves lines and patches and mounds of shells. Gathering shells is one of the great privileges of a fisherman, and I have accumulated over five hundred here, of many varieties. Shells have a singular appealing beauty. The search for new and different ones, for a perfect one of a certain kind, or a treasure just rolled up out of the unknown, grows in its fascination and adds many full moments to life, and pictures that will never fade from memory.
Birds here at Crescent Bay are rather few and far between. Even the sea birds are scarce. Gulls, terns, herons and cormorants frequent the shores, mostly early in the mornings. In the dark of dawn a trio of rascally kookaburras visit camp and set up a most raucous laughing, reverberating din in the giant trees, and then, having notified me that the break of day is at hand, they depart. They are not friendly here as were those at Bermagui. There are always ravens to be heard at odd moments of the day. These at Bateman Bay have the most dismal, grievous note I ever heard birds utter. They would be perfectly felicitous in Dante’s Inferno. It is a hoarse, low, almost wild caw, penetrating, disturbing. You find yourself questioning your right to be happy — that calamity is abroad.
The magpies have a wonderful liquid, melodious note, somewhat similar to the beautiful one of the tui in New Zealand. The thrush sings rarely along this shore, and his call makes you stop to listen. There are other songsters that add to the joy of this camp site, but as I cannot identify them by their music alone they must go nameless.
Traveling to and fro along this south coast, I have made acquaintance with a number of trees, not many varieties, but countless ones of striking beauty. And it was my good fortune at this camp to pitch my tents under some of the grandest trees that ever ministered to me in my many needs of the changing hours of day and night.
They stand upon a sloping bench up from the beach some distance, and they dominate the scene. They are called spotted red gum trees. I could have thought of a better name than that, but it does not detract from their stately loveliness. There are about a dozen in number, four of which are giants of the bushland, ten feet thick at the base and towering two hundred feet aloft. They spread magnificently, huge branches sweeping out gnarled and crooked, but always noble with some quality of power and life and age. The lacy foliage gives the effect of a green canopy, with the sun’s rays streaking down golden-green, as if through cathedral windows. But the color of these spotted monarchs intrigues me most. The dark spots and patches of bark stand out from a pale olive background that varies its hue according to the weather. In the rain the trunks take on a steely gray with black designs standing out in relief. At sunset, if there is gold and red in the west, these eucalyptus trees are indescribably beautiful. And on moonlight nights they are incredibly lovely. I have stared aloft for long, reveling in what it is they have so prodigally. I have watched the Southern Cross through a rift in the leaves. I have watched and loved them in the still noonday hour, when not a leaf stirred, and have listened to them and trembled at their mighty threshing roar in the gale.
Trees must mean a great deal to man. He came down out of them, descending from his arboreal life, to walk erect on his feet, in that dim dawn of his evolution. And ever since, during that five hundred thousand years, he has been dependent upon them. And beyond material things, if man ever develops that far, he will need them to keep alive the spiritual, the beautiful, the something that nature stands for, the meaning which forever must be inscrutable.
