[Sailing Alone Around The World by Joshua Slocum]@TWC D-Link book
Sailing Alone Around The World

CHAPTER V
18/25

They would dart away, each in a different direction, so that the wolf of the sea, the shark, pursuing one, would be led away from the others; then after a while they would all return and rendezvous under one side or the other of the sloop.

Twice their pursuers were diverted by a tin pan, which I towed astern of the sloop, and which was mistaken for a bright fish; and while turning, in the peculiar way that sharks have when about to devour their prey, I shot them through the head.
Their precarious life seemed to concern the yellowtails very little, if at all.

All living beings, without doubt, are afraid of death.
Nevertheless, some of the species I saw huddle together as though they knew they were created for the larger fishes, and wished to give the least possible trouble to their captors.

I have seen, on the other hand, whales swimming in a circle around a school of herrings, and with mighty exertion "bunching" them together in a whirlpool set in motion by their flukes, and when the small fry were all whirled nicely together, one or the other of the leviathans, lunging through the center with open jaws, take in a boat-load or so at a single mouthful.
Off the Cape of Good Hope I saw schools of sardines or other small fish being treated in this way by great numbers of cavally-fish.

There was not the slightest chance of escape for the sardines, while the cavally circled round and round, feeding from the edge of the mass.


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