Close to Shore - Michael Capuzzo [55]
As the shark moved, its dark top reflected virtually no light. The denticles on its skin muted the whoosh of its movements as the shark rose, driven by the power of the great tail sweeping from side to side, like a scythe. The fish exploded upward.
Charles Bruder felt a slight vacuum tug in the motion of the sea, noted it as a passing current, the pull of a wave, the tickle of undertow. He could not have heard the faint sucking rush of water not far beneath him. He couldn't have seen or heard what was hurtling from the murk at astonishing speed, jaws unhinging, widening, for the enormous first bite. It was the classic attack that no other creature in nature could make—a bomb from the depths.
Concealed in grim privacy beneath the surface, white attacks are often not visible from shore. As the films of A. Peter Klimley show, the surface of the water tells the story. Klimley made films of 129 great white attacks on the aquatic carnivorous mammals (such as the seal or walrus) known as pinnipeds in California's South Farallon Islands. A sudden pooling of red was a great white attacking an elephant seal. In attacks on sea lions, the water simply erupted, rising in an explosive spray nine to fifteen feet high, indicating the force with which the white struck its prey.
History did not record Charles Bruder's thoughts or feelings as he experienced a surprise great white attack. Instead, the sea told his story.
Guests on the beach in front of the Essex and Sussex suddenly saw a massive spray of water rising out of the ocean, a quarter mile out. As the plunging wall of water descended, a woman on the beach cried out, “The man in the red canoe is upset!” The surfmen White and Anderson shoved their small rescue rowboat into the water and began to row frantically east, while panicked shouts rang from the boardwalk and beach. As White and Anderson pulled closer, they saw that the “red canoe” was blood, spreading now in a wide circle. Rushing toward the red stain, eyes straining the surface of the water for Bruder, they were suddenly greeted by the unimaginable sight of the bell captain—or what was left of him—pinwheeling above the surface of the sea with incredible force.
As the surfmen drew closer, the huge fish struck Bruder again and again. “Swimming away and darting forward like an aeroplane attacking a Zeppelin, the shark made another lunge, cutting a deep gash in Bruder's abdomen,” the Philadelphia Inquirer later reported. Finally, Bruder was pulled completely under. As White and Anderson's rescue boat entered the sea of blood, the bell captain somehow managed to lift his head above water once more and to gasp, “A shark bit me.” The surfmen lowered an oar, and Bruder, with tremendous effort, lifted himself onto the gunwales, then collapsed, clinging helplessly to the side of the boat, sliding slowly back toward the ocean. Quickly, White and Anderson grabbed Bruder under the arms, and pulsing with adrenaline, hoisted him into the lifeboat. The surfmen, their strength fueled by urgency, were surprised how easy it was to lift the husky bell captain to safety. Laying him carefully on the bottom of the boat, the reason was immediately evident: There was little of Bruder left to lift. In a glance, White and Anderson noted “the loss of both of his feet.” The surfmen were covered with blood.
While one surfman pulled the oars of the boat, the other tried desperately to stop the bleeding from both Bruder's legs by ripping off his shirt to cobble together makeshift tourniquets. Blood continued to pump copiously, soaking the boat. There was little time, but Bruder was still conscious.
According to the New York Herald, Bruder described the attack to the surfmen in the boat. “He was a big gray fellow, and as rough as sandpaper. I didn't see him until after he struck me the first time. He cut me here in the side, and his belly was so rough it bruised my face and arms. That was when I yelled the first time. I thought he had gone on, but he only turned and shot back at me [and] . . . snipped my left leg off . . . He