The Shark
A shadow deep in the wave astern,
A quiver of green, a sliding fin
Shifting, but ever keeping the course—
Silent and keen as sin.
Sometimes close in our wake he swam,
And sometimes far, with a careless air—
But we knew that ever those evil eyes
Were wide awake and aware.
Through the doldrums, across the Line
We crawled; and on deck, at every turn,
The Skipper marked, with uneasy gaze,
That voyaging fin astern.
All day, all night, day in, day out,
It held to our course on that lazy sea.
“He be waitin’ for more nor the galley slops,”
Said Boatswain Pat McGee.
The men aloft looked aft and saw,
(Where the sinister dorsal tacked and slid),
An eye that stared at our rolling hull
With never the blink of a lid.
At last we won to brisker seas,
With spray abeam and porpoise ahead:
And the black fin sank in our bubbling wake...
“Thank God!” the Skipper said.
