Close to Shore - Michael Capuzzo [37]
In that moment, an awful feeling swept over Vansant as the continued cries, louder now, “Watch out!” rang from the beach. Seconds before the attack, a shiver traveled down his spine—humans are gifted, as are all large mammals, with the instinctive ability to detect that they are being hunted. As the creature's shadow merged with his on the bright, sandy floor of the sea, Charles experienced an adrenal explosion, the overpowering natural urge to live. He was in only three and a half feet of water, close to shore. Safety was at hand. But it was too late.
The great jaws rose from the water, a white protective membrane rolled over the eyes, fifty triangular teeth closed with more than six tons of pressure per square inch, and man and fish splashed in a spreading pool of blood. One bite. One massive, incapacitating bite tearing into the left leg below the knee. Charles screamed in mortal agony, a scream that resonated to the beach and tennis courts and veranda. The attack had taken less than a second, but now time began to slow down. His parents and sisters and the crowd of onlookers stood transfixed in horror and disbelief.
Charles still screamed, numb with terror, trying to free himself from the vise of fifty large serrated teeth, but he, too, had little idea what was happening to him. He went into shock, and even as shock subsided, despite the gruesome wound, he felt, incredibly, a minimum of pain. As strange as it seems, it is common for shark attack victims to experience “painless torture”—to greatly underestimate the severity of their wounds. Some experts suggest the first bite produces massive nerve damage or somehow numbs the victims of pain. One neurophysiologist calls this phenomenon “non-opiate stress-induced analgesia.” A body of anecdotal evidence compiled over many years suggests that under great stress, soldiers, athletes, and other people don't seem to “feel” pain—perhaps, experts say, because pain in the most life-threatening situations is not advantageous for the survival of the species.
People onshore had no frame of reference for what was happening. “The young man was bathing in only three and a half feet of water,” remembered W. K. Barklie, a Philadelphia businessman on the beach that day. “We thought he was joking until we saw the blood redden the water.”
Charles fought valiantly, but his struggle to free himself only tightened the shark's grip on his femoral artery: the great teeth ground down to the bone. Witnessing their son being devoured by a predator, Dr. and Mrs. Vansant were numb with shock and pain that would shadow them for the rest of their lives. But Louise, the middle sister, kept her wits about her as she witnessed a sight she would never forget: “Everyone was horrified to see my brother thrashing about in the water as if he were struggling with some monster under the surface,” Louise recalled. “He fought desperately, and as we rushed toward him we could see great quantities of blood.”
Then, as if a spell were broken, men entered the water to rescue the young man as shouts arose from the beach.
What followed baffled shark researchers for decades: The great white backed off in the red-tinged surf, pieces of Charles Vansant's calf and femoral artery in its mouth, and appeared to be waiting. Twenty years later, in the summer of 1936 in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, a great white provided a clue to the shark's behavior in