[Gentleman’s Magazine.]
    The way the Arabs catch sharks is very curious and interesting, and is somewhat similar to playing a heavy salmon, only no rod is used. A hook of soft iron wire is made very sharp and baited with a lump of garbage of some kind, usually a piece of shark too rancid even for a slave, and the line, which is small and very slackly spun, is wound round for some small little distance from the hook with thin sheet lead, both to protect it from the teeth of the fish and to act as a sinker, and the other end is made fast to a huge calabash which acts as a float. When a shark takes the bait he tows the calabush about, but can not sink it for any length of time, and the fishermen then set off after him in their canoe, and when they get hold of the line they play their captive until he is actually drowned.
    The shark that was now on the hook was proving a tartar, and before the two boats came near the canoe which was playing him was capsized, and the half dozen men who formed her crew thrown into the water. “Give way, my lads,” said the lieutenant, and both boats dashed away, the crews straining every nerve to save the swimmers from their dangerous position, the water literally swarming with sharks, and in a few minutes the men were picked up and their canoe righted. The Englishmen, like all their nation, fond of sport, next went after the float, which could be seen being towed hither and thither as the shark tried to free itself from the incumbrance, but the Arabs, when they saw their intention, shouted and gesticulated to prevent them from doing so, and a second canoe put off from the dhow to assist in playing the shark.
    With some little trouble the line was again secured, and after about two hours hard work, during which Johnny Shark several times nearly mastered his captors, he was at length killed and dragged upon the rocks, where the English, as he was such a monster, had the curiosity to measure him, when he proved to be the enormous length of thirty-three feet ten inches. This was the largest shark they had ever seen, though both boats had had oars dashed at by the ravenous brutes, and on one occasion the same whaler, when boarding a dhow at night from the ship, had her rudder carried away by one.
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