American Angler in Australia (1937) Page 5

  "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 mOlTe 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.

  Australians are blessed with their boundless bush. No doubt the bigness and warmth which are characteristic of the native Australian have come in some degree from the splendid trees under which he has lived.

  It may seem rather a far cry from the beauty and ministry of trees to the ghastly menace of a man-eating shark, and a grueling fight with one, but that is where we must go.

  South of Bateman Bay, and ten miles off Cape Burly, we ran into a trio of trawlers working a wide area of waters that must have netted them tons of fish. Many as have been the trawlers I have seen, I never before fished among them. This was a curious and unique experience, valuable to any fisherman.

  These trawlers criss-crossed this twenty-mile square of ocean, and about every two hours they halted to haul up their nets. These had wooden doors, and an opening thirty or forty feet wide, which traveled along the bottom, scooping up all kinds of fish. We saw only the rubbish they threw overboard, consisting of small rays, fiddlers, sharks, porcupine fish, and a red-colored big-eyed fish that appeared to have burst upon the surface. We also saw barracuda, leatherjacks, and other fish.

  They floated in confusion along the surface, in the track of the trawler, most of them alive, swimming upside down. Gulls, shearwater ducks (mutton birds), and the great wide-winged albatross reaped a harvest that the sharks had not time to get. The sharks, however, were busy enough. I saw dozens of whalers, a few hammerheads, several large pale sharks that kept deep down, and a number of Marlin in the wake of these ships.

  It was exceedingly interesting to watch them, aside from the possibility of raising a swordfish. The screaming of the sea fowl, the colored fish lying scattered all over the wakes, the big dark fins and tails of sharks milling about, an occasional swirl and splash on the water, and lastly the passing to and fro of the trawlers afforded a moving and thrilling spectacle for an angler.

  I took that all in as I trolled to and fro, following the ships.

  Swordfish fins were occasionally sighted, and we raised a number. They had fed, however, and would not take a bait, and their interest appeared to be solely in the teasers.

  Two days of this working with the trawlers did not earn us a single Marlin. We caught several, though only after we had run far out of the zone of the trawlers. I tried a third day, however, finding it hard to resist those big sickle tails that we caught sight of rarely. I was, of course, on the lookout for a big black Marlin.

  Still I kept a weather eye open for a big shark, and was not particular what breed he was. Among the trawlers it was not unusual to see a dozen whaler sharks all in a bunch, sticking their ugly dark noses out, gulping down fish into their wide mouths.

  That third day, coming upon two big ones close together, I said to Emil, "Let's have a go at these." And we were soon fast to a heavy fish. A whaler will usually take a long fast run. Mine did this, while Emil's, evidently a huge fish, merely went down. Our boatman, Peter, was at a loss what to do. In the melee, however, Emil's shark got off, and I was left to battle a stubborn, heavy brute.

  We caught up with him, and then he was off again. After this second run, however, he sounded deep and invited me to see what I could do about it.

  After an hour or so of getting him up and having him go down again I began to suspect that I had hold of a big fellow. Therefore I called upon patience and reserve strength to make a sure thing of catching him.

  The fight was interesting because it was exactly what Mr. Bullen, the Sydney shark expert, said was the way the great tiger worked. I was acquiring practice and experience, at considerable loss of sweat, labor, and enthusiasm. This son-of-a-gun stayed in one place, it appeared.

  I had to pump and wind, pump and wind, monotonously and continuously.

  I would get him up to the double line and then down he would go again.

  I had that work to do over and over. His evident size, however, kept me nailed to my post; and after over two hours of hard work I had him coming.

  My first sight of this whaler was a flash of gold, and as he came closer up he changed color from that to dark green, and finally black. He was a sullen-eyed surly brute that made striking the gaff into him a keen, savage sort of pleasure. When Peter sent the steel home I yelled, "Mr.

  Whaler, you'll never kill another human being!"

  That idea had seemed to obsess me all a
long, and it grew stronger. This whaler was big and heavy and mean. On the gaff he raised hell, wet us thoroughly, and made everybody mad. He was too big to haul up on the stern, so we had to tow him fifteen miles to camp--a long, slow trip.

  I gambled with the boys on his weight, which I wagered was nine hundred pounds, but, as usual, I lost, for he weighed only eight hundred and ninety. He was twelve feet long; and those two facts constitute a mighty big fish.

  A Mr. Wallace and companion fisherman, staying at Bateman Bay, came in one day with a six-hundred-and-ninety-pound shark, which they had fought for forty minutes, and then shot. They could not identify it, and asked me to do so, which I was glad to be able to do. Sharks can always be identified by their teeth, provided you know shark teeth.

  Fortunately, in this case it was easy, as the large triangular upper teeth, serrated, and the smaller less-triangular lower teeth, belonged to that rare species of the Seven Seas--the white pointer or less commonly known as the white death.

  This fellow grows to forty feet and more in length, and teeth have been found in the ooze from the bottom of the sea so large that they must have belonged to sharks eighty feet long--a fearful and marvelous monster to conjure up in imagination.

  I had seen at least two of these rare and great sharks, one at Rangaroa, in the Paumotos, and the other off Montague Island. Naturally I was hoping to catch one.

  So far as I can ascertain, only three of this species has been caught in Australia, one eighteen feet long, shot and harpooned at Bermagui; another larger, which was vouched for by Dr. Stead, the scientist. My boatman, Peter Williams, harpooned one at the whaling-station near Russell, New Zealand. It was twenty-three feet long and would have weighed far over a ton. I saw the jaws of this one, and they were indeed formidable. A good-sized man could sit down inside of them.

  My hopes of striking a white-death shark on the South Coast had almost waned when, three days before we shifted camp at Bateman Bay I sighted what I thought was one at Black Rock. He had the same shape and the same dorsal fin with which I had familiarized myself. Only he appeared darker in color.