Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches онлайн

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Then, secure from that terror, she took her ease, thinking poor mother, that all danger was past. But alas for her hopes! A grim silent shadow shot past as she lay basking on her side, her calf lazily sucking. Startled into sudden activity, she sprang forward her full length, swiftly sweeping her wide fins back and forth in search of her infant. Again that dark form flew past her side, bearing away on the projecting sword from its head the body of her first-born writhing in sudden death.

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“How very hard it is to provide for a young, fast-growing family nowadays,” said the mother shark, turning, for the hundredth time that morning, upon her broad side in order to get a better view of what might be stirring above. For nearly a week she had been fasting—in fact ever since she came in hurriedly at the close of a great feast upon the stripped carcase of a recent whale. There, by dint of the energy of her massive shoulders, her fourteen feet of length, and fivefold rows of triangular teeth, she had managed to secure a respectable proportion of the spoil for the replenishing of her own huge maw as well as for the upkeep of the fourteen sharklings that were now restlessly darting in and out of their cosy cave at the far end of her capacious throat.