Close to Shore by Michael Capuzzo
Author:Michael Capuzzo
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780767912549
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2002-06-24T16:00:00+00:00
It wasn't given an opportunity for a second bite. We have enough deaths and consumptions in the Attack File to know a white shark will happily consume a human being if it wants to. But because of our brain and social structure, a person grabbed by a white shark has a very good chance of getting to a boat, getting on a surfboard, having a swimming buddy help him escape the water. The poor sea lion doesn't have those assets. If humans were unpalatable we wouldn't have bodies disappearing and consumed.
In gray light the tide came in, covering the sands, and the globes of the streetlamps ensnared the brightness of dawn. In the early hours of Friday, July 7, before the hotels began serving coffee and distributing the morning newspaper, gentlemen made briskly to the boardwalk for their constitutionals, gentlemen in boaters and blue blazers, chins set to the breeze, who would not permit themselves to be thrown off balance. Later, intrepid young men, fewer in number, declared it a fine beach day, too lovely to waste, with the rain coming Saturday, and as the sun heated the shallows and the roadsters started down the coast road, they went into the sea.
Yet, as the sun rounded over the ocean at Spring Lake, a small squadron of boats split the shallows, gunning loud motorboat engines and trailing diluted crimson pools of animal blood. On the prows of the boats stood groups of men, faces hard and pointed down toward the water, long rifles and harpoons angled high against the delicate blue sky. Roped to the boats were chunks of lamb slaughtered by the butcher that morning, bait for the man-eater. Dr. Schauffler had organized the patrol to catch and kill the shark, and also to protect bathers, so those who wished could swim with peace of mind. Yet before long, as the sun tipped toward the hotel, young men, one at a time, left the water, returning to the hotel, or the pool at the Bath and Tennis Club, fed by the sea it faced. Shortly, the line of blue-green breakers rolled in uninterrupted, gulls swooped and called to a high and empty sky, and the beach at Spring Lake was bereft, for the first summer day in many years, of human presenceâexcept for the men with the guns, and the sharp metallic smells of gasoline and lamb's blood.
In the lobby of the Essex and Sussex that morning, the white-haired figure of Mrs. George W. Childs moved through the crowds, emboldened by purpose, spreading news of the bell captain's funeral. Her plan to ship the young man home across the Atlantic had been refused by the Swiss counsel as too dangerous during wartime, with U-boats prowling the shipping channels. The bell captain would be buried the next morning in nearby Manasquan, and the management of the E & S vowed to cover all expenses, as if by doing the right thingâand doing it quicklyâthe hotel and its guests could put the tragedy behind them.
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