and gaze into its depths. The thought of the forbidden look wrestled with her, tortured her, filled her with a shrinking fright. She felt the breeze twitching at her skirts, binding them about her limbs, drawing and pulling as if it would willingly drag her out into space. Oh, it was cruel creeping there with safety within easy clutch. If one could but fall face downward and hold on! Poor Mike! she no longer wondered at his pitiful terror.

Gradually her consciousness of the situation faded; a film obscured her sight of the monotonous rising and falling of Kelly's heels. It was no longer an effort to walk. She seemed to float along. Now Kelly's heels were no longer in sight. The girder, a dull-red blur, began to swing round and round. Her ears were filled with a far-off ringing, and a strange burning came into her eyes. Then all at once a hot flood of perspiration, welling over her brows, seemed suddenly to clear her vision. In a flash she had forgotten the winds tugging at her hair, Kelly, Mike-everything. For she was staring straight downward, in a fixed, horrified gaze, at a plane of deep blue that glided from under her sight

and varied only in the contour of the foam that flecked its surface.

The clearness of vision was but momentary. A blur of swirling blue succeeded it. Dreamily she felt a hand laid on her shoulder from behind. A confused sound as of voices rang in her ears, but it was vague, distant. The infinity of gliding azure was to her the

only reality and all the world seemed swallowed up in it.

Something gripped her shoulder and it ached dully. Then real pain followed sharp and fierce. She came to herself

as from a night mare. It was O'Malley who was torturing her.

"Mike! Mike!" the words buzzed in her ears; "what about Mike?"

Mike? Oh, yes, Mike. Her thoughts cleared slowly. She was consciencesmitten. Every tender association with him flashed before her. Mike, poor Mike, was to be saved and she alone could do

it. Her eyes were back on the beam; her fear for herself forgotten.

O'Malley was pointing to something directly ahead, and now she realized for the first time that they were almost upon the object of their quest. Yes, there was Mike, his breast strained against the beam, his chin locked on the side farthest from his body as if he would make a hook of it to aid his straining hands. There was something uncanny in the silence of that motionless figure-dead to everything of the world save its terror.

"Moike, Moike," she half-whispered, the tears springing into her eyes, "don't ye know me?" Then as she received no response she clasped her hands in an agony of despair. "Oh, he'll die, he'll die," she choked. "Moike, Moike, spake to me. Oh, Moike, is it crazy ye be? Don't ye know me? Don't ye know yer Katy ?"

The obvious futility of her pleading came home to her quickly; the stupidity of the man's clinging there tempted her ready anger.

Reaching down, she seized him by the collar of his jacket and shook him with the energy of desperation.

"Moike, ye spalpeen, wake up. If ye ain't the death of me, Oi'll be the death of you yet."

Mike started perceptibly, rolling his head to one side. Katy noted the sign and yanked again viciously.

"Moike, dear old Moike, ye baste, ye brute, wake up," she called between her

set teeth.

And a change came upon the little monkey-like figure of Mulligan. Dawn

ing consciousness was creeping over him. The short rasping breaths died away. Then a shudder swept over him, and gulping his lungs full of air he sobbed a prolonged sigh like one who has come out of a dream. His rapidly blinking eyes lost their glassy stare and he turned them up pitifully at his wife. His fingers relaxed the rigor of their grip.

And then almost before the spectators could realize what had happened, Katy had jerked him up to the top of the beam, set him on his feet with a resounding cuff to straighten him, and, holding him by the collar, was marching him straight before her, back over the narrow, dull-red path to the shore.

Superintendent Haworth stared at her in simple admiration as she stepped at last upon the abutment at his side, and as the men about them sent up a wild involuntary cheer of genuine joy over the successful issue of the exploit, he stepped forward to offer her his hand.

But Katy burst into harsh, nervous, hysterical sobs. "Oh, Moike,. Moike, is it alive ye are? Oh, Moikey, what a fright ye've been givin' me." She had no eyes but for him.

HE sharks of the oceans are the most abused, and most hated of all creatures. There are more absurd stories concerning their ferocity, more ridiculous nonsense about the contents of their bellies, than would fill a large volume. And strangest of all, the worst stories about them are told by seamen, told as truth, and the credulous landsman has nothing but to believe. The late Mr. Herman Oelrichs, millionaire sportsman, once offered a thousand dollars for an authentic case of anyone being killed and eaten by a "man-eater" -and no one has yet been able to get the money. I have myself offered several times to duplicate the reward, but met upon each occasion with such showers of "authentic" cases-none of which were ever proved that I gave the matter no further consideration. One of the few

seamen who ever told the truth about pelagic sharks, happens to be Mr. Frank Bullen, author of many stories of whaling, etc., and his description of the hordes which infest the whaling grounds are as near as possible to what I have seen myself.

That a shark will not attack a man in the water is manifestly too much to say, for at certain seasons vast hordes or schools of these pests, or rather scavengers, will "strike" at almost anything that is dropped into the sea. These littorals are fierce from hunger and a small fish which a man could easily pick up and whirl about his head-a common way of killing a shark along the southern coast-will strike savagely, probably at a man or any other living body which offers something in the way of food. So also will the bonito, or one of the mackerel tribe.

The pelagic shark, the triangular toothed-miscalled man-eater-is a slug

gish fish in spite of its large fin-development. It is absolutely incapable of following a ship, if the ship is under any reasonable headway, but it will often swim along with a sailing vessel in calm weather when she is making not over

HAMMER HEAD SHARK,

three knots an hour. This deep-water fish is not as gregarious as the littoral cousin, but generally goes alone or in pairs, male and female. While it is a cold blooded creature, not at all like the porpoise, or any of the whale family, it brings forth its young alive.

The shark performs the same functions afloat that the well-known turkey buzzard performs ashore. He is probably the most ubiquitous creature in existence, being found in every sea from Greenland to Cape Horn and from Alaska to Australia. In February, 1892, I killed two of the pelagic variety in three degrees north, one hundred and twenty west, from the deck of a sailing ship becalmed. This is as far from land as it is possible to get, right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, our course taking us there from Cape Horn to 'Frisco to get the trades which do not blow with any regularity near the West coast of South America. These two specimens were in no way different from hundreds I had killed nearer the shore. They were male and female and they had followed the ship for about six or seven miles during the entire day. She had barely steer

ing way upon her and we had no difficulty in hooking both before dark, drawing their heads above the surface and shooting them with soft lead bullets, afterwards cutting off their tails for a "mascot" to break the calm weather.

Their skins underwent some chemical experiment I was developing and were used up in this

manner.

It is for the skin of the shark that he is mostly hunted. If some excellent chemist could work out some formula to make his enormously tough hide pliable he would be a valuable asset to the leather trade, for sharks can be had by the million. There is practically no limit to their numbers. The hide is nearly as thick as that of the hippopotamus and it bears millions of small, sand like follicles which make it as rough as a file. It is this rough quality which makes it valuable for sword hilts, and the hilts of nearly all well-made weapons are wrapped with it to insure a firm hand-hold. All Japanese weapons are hilted in this manner. Sometimes the corrugations of the under part are moused or served with gilt wire to complete the effect.

In the Japan Stream, or Black Stream, which corresponds somewhat to our own Gulf Stream, the shark is plentiful, just as plentiful as he is on our own coast and for centuries the Orientals have fished for him, using him both for food and other purposes. Shark fins are a well-known Chinese dish. In the tropical waters of the Atlantic the shark seldom grows over the length of ten feet, probably not one in a million grows over twelve feet. Of nine thousand and some odd sharks killed, only thirty were more than ten feet long and only five or six were more than twelve feet from nose to tail tip. Therefore it is believable that the "monsters" told of in yarns were never put under the tape.

A steel tape has a most disheartening