Chapter 13 - Page 2

steering
oar. At times, these gentry swim in herds; especially about the
remains of a slaughtered whale. They are the vultures of the deep.

Then we often encountered the dandy Blue Shark, a long, taper and
mighty genteel looking fellow, with a slender waist, like a Bond-
street beau, and the whitest tiers of teeth imaginable. This dainty
spark invariably lounged by with a careless fin and an indolent tail.
But he looked infernally heartless.

How his cold-blooded, gentlemanly air, contrasted with the rude,
savage swagger of the Tiger Shark; a round, portly gourmand; with
distended mouth and collapsed conscience, swimming about seeking whom
he might devour. These gluttons are the scavengers of navies,
following ships in the South Seas, picking up odds and ends of
garbage, and sometimes a tit-bit, a stray sailor. No wonder, then,
that sailors denounce them. In substance, Jarl once assured me, that
under any temporary misfortune, it was one of his sweetest
consolations to remember, that in his day, he had murdered, not
killed, shoals of Tiger Sharks.

Yet this is all wrong. As well hate a seraph, as a shark. Both were
made by the same hand. And that sharks are lovable, witness their
domestic endearments. No Fury so ferocious, as not to have some
amiable side. In the wild wilderness, a leopard-mother caresses her
cub, as Hagar did Ishmael; or a queen of France the dauphin. We know
not what we do when we hate. And I have the word of my gentlemanly
friend Stanhope, for it; that he who declared he loved a good hater
was but a respectable sort of Hottentot, at best. No very genteel
epithet this, though coming from the genteelest of men. But when the
digger of dictionaries said that saying of his, he was assuredly not
much of a Christian. However, it is hard for one given up to
constitutional hypos like him; to be filled with the milk and
meekness of the gospels. Yet, with deference, I deny that my old
uncle Johnson really believed in the sentiment ascribed to him. Love
a hater, indeed! Who smacks his lips over gall? Now hate is a
thankless thing. So, let us only hate hatred; and once give love
play, we will fall in love with a unicorn. Ah! the easiest way is the
best; and to hate, a man must work hard. Love is a delight; but hate
a torment. And haters are thumbscrews, Scotch boots, and Spanish
inquisitions to themselves. In five words--would they were a Siamese
diphthong--he who hates is a fool.

For several days our Chamois was followed by two of these aforesaid
Tiger Sharks. A brace of confidential inseparables, jogging along in
our wake, side by side, like a couple of highwaymen, biding their
time till you come to the cross-roads. But giving it up at last, for
a bootless errand, they