A Diver and a Shark.

Manawatu Herald, 8 February 1898, Page 3

A Diver and a Shark.

DESPERATE FIGHT UNDER WATER.

To fight to a finish with a maneating shark, 80 feet below the surface, was tjhe lot that fell to Andrew Cameron, a Scotch diver, in the harbour of Vera Cruz, Mexico. Cameron is a stockily built chap of herculean strength. Barring an injured knee, he came out of the desperate struggle unscathed. He holds a certificate from the British Navy, and is considered an expert in deep sea diving. That is why he was engaged three months ago to go to Verti Cruz and inspect the basis of a bulkhead 2000 feet long, built by a Glasgow firm, for the Mexican Government. The bulkhead forms a square basin that varies in depth from twenty to eighty feet. Its walls are made <>i block of stone, set in concrete. At intervals, inside the basin, are pilings close to the walls. Cameron had two men to man the pumps that supplied him with .air, and a Mexican diver named King who looked after the signals, and saw to it that the proper volume of air was supplied.

Cameron had been a! work ten weeks, and had inspected one half of the wall by October 16, the day of his nearly fatal encounter. His experience from this point is best told by himself, as follows. — "I descended at a point where the water is eighty feet deep, and the deepest spot in the basin — and the pressure was forty pounds to the pquare inch. I had been working two hours and a half when I noticed a shadow over me. Th& water was very clear, and I could see the wall and the bottom distinctly Oo looking up, to my utter astonishment, I saw a shark fully ten feet long close to ray helmet. The sight almost bereft roe of the power of motion for a moment. I had seen dogfish some two feet long in the basin, but they had not bothered me, and I had been assured that no man-eaters ever came into the harbour. Yet here was a ehark weighing at least 700 pounds, and evidently he wa3 manoeuvring to get at me. h was my life or his. Instantly I dropped the hammer and wrench I hold, and reached for my dirk. It wag a good ont with a two edged blade, two and a half inches wide and eighteen inches long. Reaching up quickiy I drove the blade into the shark's throat, and ripping as big a hole as I could. Then I pulled the signal to be drawn up, but it was not understood, apparently, and I am glad of it now, for had I been drawn up then the shark would surely have bitten off my legs. He didn't expect any sudden attack, but I knew the monster would quickly retaliate ; so I. tried to slip behind one of the piles that stood out from the wall. But I was too slow. The diving clogs weighted ray feet, and the shark, turning

quickly, and sinking almost to the bottom, darted afc me. I tried to get behind the pile, but, like a fla9b, the shark turned on his side — as the creatures always do— exposing the big white belly, and opened his jaws. My left leg was exposed, and I expected it would be snapped off. But the shark closed his jaws too quickly. He bit a solid piece from the rubber leg off my diving suit, and jammed my leg with such force against the pile that, the tendons were etrained and the knee dislocated. The leg was partially paralysed, but I saw my chance, and drove my dirk into the shark's belly with my left hand, and gave one desperate rip with all the strength I could command. That finished Mr Shark, but I did not know it then, for the blood and mud from the bottom hid him from view. A new danger threatened me, for the water rushed through the rent in the rubber legging, and rose to my cheat. There the pressure of air stopped it for a time, but I knew thaib I would soon be strangled if I was not drawn up, so I tugged at the signal rope. They hauled me up, but the shark reached the surface ahead of me. After thrashing about a while he stretched out dead. The sight of the dying shark had told the men of my danger, and caused them to haul away with all their might. I was so nearly unv conscious that I couldn't climb the short ladder to the raft, and when at length they removed my suit I fell in a heap, totally exhausted.'*