WITH THE SHARKS AT SUAKIM.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2742, 8 February 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

WITH THE SHARKS AT SUAKIM.

Mr Georcie T. Lucock, secretary t»f the Shipmasters and Officers' Union, writing from South Shields, Beads tho following aooount of an adventure he met with while serving as second officer in tho transport steamer Gurdepu, No. 88, at Suakim, during the late war :—One fine Sunday, while Transport No. 88 anchored on the Suakim coast awaiting orders from the port authorities, it Was all arranged that a boat should go in the early moruiug away from the ship to the Qoral reefd in search of coral and shells. Accordingly, the first and second officers, and first and third engineer, with a jovial lot of seamen and firemen, started at 5.30 from the ship, all bent on a good bathe and on finding some good specimens of coral and shells for wives, sweethearts, or sisters at home. We tried the first reef, but it did not come up to our ideas of coral, therefore we palled further duwn to the next reef. Soon all hands were stripped and in the wator; but first it was arranged between the first and second mates that one or other of them should remain in the boat with a boat's crew. Well it was that snoh arrangement was made.

After about eight or nine of the men had been a little time in the water, some on one side of tho boat and some on the other, and at a distance from twelve to twenty fathoms, a hue and cry was raised from the party on the port side of the boat, "A shark, a shark I' , The second officer, being in the water and on tho starboard side of the boat thinking , this was a got up scare, was in the act of remonstrating with tho men on such foolishness, and threatening to have them all called into the boat, when hie brother I officer, the first mate, let oat an unearthly yell from the boat. "For God's sake, give way, lads, with your oars." The boat was speedily alongside the poor third engineer, and only just in time for tho mate to deal Mr Sharkey a prod with the boat hoott, for already his huge white shining belly was upturned, so that hie great ugly maw might grab at tho third engineer. He, poor fellow, wae now hauled into the boat, though more dead than alive, the rest scrambling into her ae best they could. The chief mate, realising tho danger that his fellow officer waa in out to windward, shouted, "Look oat for

yourself, Mr L , and God help you. Give way, my lads, for the lore of God; he'll have the second mate."

"Aye, aye, sir," was the hearty response. And didn't we just give away ! Why, we nearly raised the boat out of the water with powerful strokes of our oars, till she seemed to jump over the waves like a living creature who shared our determination to cheat that ugly brute if we could, and don't a shell-back, specially a deep-water one, just like cheating them ugly brutes 1 You bet ! if the Government would send sodgers and men -o' - war to kill them monsters, instead of slaughtering men, I for one would think it better. Howsomcver, fly as that boat did, wo woro nono too soon. Tho excitement of us fellows was intense, as the chief mate caught tho shark another dig in the jaw with the boat-hook and diverted him from the poor second dickey for a moment, who meanwhile was caught up into tho boat in nick of time boforo the shark could go for him again. The chief mate then fetched the shark a second prod with tho boat hook, and that caused tho shark, I suppose, to sheer off full speed, for wo saw him lash himself off into deep water. The first mate, who had been "many years in Her Majesty's service," and who had been slave catching many years in the Red Sea, and on the African coasts, believed tho shark was one of tho roef-sbarks, but he never had any idea till he saw that ono that they would be in such shallow water.

Thank God, we all got safe back on board No. 88 to breakfast, but when the captain saw the solemn faces at the breakfast table that Sunday morning he began to smell that something unusual had been up, and you may be snre we got a severe wigging for our trouble in going coral hunting on Sunday. The poor mate, though but a young man, only made two or three voyages after that, when he was called from this earth ; he succumbed to the fever at Aspinall. But the second mate and the third engineer still live to spin this yarn, and thank God for all their escape, and to pray that the Union and Seafaring may be as successful in rescuing shell-backs from land sharks as we were in rescuing them from the Suakim shark.