Close to Shore - Michael Capuzzo [108]
To his astonishment, the shark was rising out of the net and onto the stern, snapping its great jaws. The stern heaved downward, and Schleisser battled for purchase. He could see the fish's dark top and even its whitish underside—and the size of its teeth. Perhaps only a hunter as experienced as Schleisser could consider the creature attacking him without losing all hope. The mouth that Schleisser faced over the gunwales was wide enough to swallow him. Given his knowledge, he may have guessed it was a great white, perhaps the manhunter from the headlines. As the boat rocked wildly, the shark splashed water vigorously with its powerful tail. “The sea-tiger beat the sea into a foam,” he later recalled.
Schleisser was in no position to surrender, for it soon became apparent that he and Murphy were the prey. The great white was trying to leap the gunwales to reach the two men, jaws agape. As the boat thrashed on the bay, Schleisser tried to steady himself to attempt a blow at the creature's head, but each time he set to swing the oar handle, “he was thwarted by the rocking of the boat.”
Schleisser's plan was a dangerous one. He may have known of the shark's affinity for attacking oars or of the fury with which sharks around the world responded to confrontations with fishermen.
Finding his footing for an instant, Schleisser struck with all his strength. The first blow landed on the nose, the second about the gills. The shark responded furiously, rising directly toward Schleisser's arm. The great jaws missed their target, but the immense head struck Schleisser's forearm hard, its sandpaperlike skin opening cuts on Schleisser's wrist. There was blood now in the water. The shark thrashed wildly, entangling itself further in the mesh of the net. With a desperate rush it leaped onto the stern toward the men. Schleisser saw an opportunity and struck another heavy blow on the nose which partially stunned the shark. As it lay dazed for a moment on the stern, Schleisser struck it repeatedly on the gills and the head until the fish went slack and slowly slid into the net. Schleisser and Murphy fell back into the boat exhausted, near collapse. The shark was dead. They had beaten it to death.
Stunned, the men sat silently, unable to move or talk as the boat gently rocked on the bay. Moving slowly, they got the engine to turn over and chugged back toward Amboy, towing the dead shark.
When they reached the wharf at South Amboy, Schleisser and Murphy were greeted by the usual crowd of fishermen and onlookers who gathered when a boat arrived with an unusually large fish in tow. On this day, however, the murmurs of curiosity on the docks rose to levels of excitement beyond the usual discussion of the impressive size of the fish. For it was Michael Schleisser—a man with a reputation as a big game fisherman—who arrived at the dock, and the fish he had was no ordinary trophy. It was a shark, a large one.
Michael Schleisser and John Murphy clambered onto the docks with the ragged look of men who had nothing left to give. Wearily, Schleisser described the battle with the shark. The big-game hunter admitted the shark had attacked more ferociously than any African lion or any grizzly bear he had ever encountered. It was, he said, “the hardest fight for life I've ever had.”
Eagerly, the men helped Schleisser and Murphy hoist the giant fish from its tow. It took half a dozen men to carry it. Michael Schleisser announced that he wanted a picture, and hastily, the massive