In the Jaws of a Shark
佚名 / Anonymous
Except for the seals bobbing their black beads in and out of the green Pacific waters, brothers Eric and Nick Larsen seemed to have the ocean to themselves.
Dressed in wet suits, gloves on their hands, they straddled their rocking surfboards under a brilliant blue sky. There was a southerly flow to the ocean this cool Monday morning, July 1, 1991. Four-foot waves were sweeping into a narrow, deserted beach, one of the many coves on the coastline north of California' s Monterey Bay.
Sometime after 8 a.m., 50-year-old Nick pointed his board toward the shore about 150 yards away. "I' m going to the truck to warm up. " he said.
"I' ll stay a little longer. " Eric called after him.
Until ten weeks earlier, Eric had been a software engineer for a Silicon Valley company writing programs for a fiber-optic data network for the proposed NASA space station. But he found the pace too slow and wanted to be outdoors.
So when the company began laying off employee, the 32-year-old told management he' d take a leave of absence.
At six-foot-one and 175 pounds, Eric was always in shape. Now he brought himself to peak fitness, running, swimming, bicycling, surfing and canoeing.
Awaiting the break of a good wave, Eric gazed seaward. Then he noticed a swirling turbulence close by. There' s something really big down there, he thought.
In that instant, he felt a powerful clamp on his left leg. Gaping in horror, he saw two wide rows of white, triangular teeth, bared to the gums, biting through flesh.Thigh to shin, his leg was caught in the jaws of a great white shark at least 15 feet long.
Pry them loose! In lightning-fast reflex, Eric shot his gloved left hand to the top of the monster' s snout, his right to the bottom. He pushed mightily against the jaws, while the shark tugged.
At that moment, the jaws opened, and Eric jerked his leg free. He kicked away from the hulking attacker, arms still out stretched. Too late, he tried to pull them in.
Lunging, tail thrashing, the shark sank its teeth deep into Eric' s left arm from elbow to wrist and crunched down on the bone of the right forearm. His hands, untouched, groped inside the huge cavity of the mouth.
Eric was afraid, but no terrified. His engineer' s mind focused on the jaw. Pulling and tugging desperately, he felt his right arm move against the teeth. A fierce pull, and he tore it out. Attack! Hit him! Bunching his right fist, he smashed the shark' s gray-white belly in a hammer blow. The hide felt flat, muscular, but the pressure came off his left arm and he yanked it clear.
He was under the shark, away from its jaws. Then his body was jerked violently. The shark had snagged the six-foot nylon leash attaching Eric' s right ankle to the surfboard. I' m all chewed up, he thought wildly, and now this.
For several seconds, he was towed through the water feet first at dizzying speed. Then, abruptly, he was floundering. The leash was broken, the shark nowhere in sight.
He kicked to the surface and gulped air. His surfboard was floating only a few feet away, and he swung himself aboard, belly down.
Over the wave crests Eric caught a glimpse of the shoreline and paddled for it.Relax, he coached himself. It' s not over yet. Conserve your energy.
He settled into a rhythmic pace, but each stroke of his arms left a scarlet trail. Anxiously, he scanned the ocean for a dorsal fin. The shark was out there somewhere. To find him, it had only to follow the blood.
Eric wanted to go faster, but dared not. The harder he paddled, the faster his heart pounded and the more his blood lost. Halfway to shore, he looked behind, and his eyes fixed on a wave rushing at him. Head up, hands guiding, he caught its crest and rode it to shore. At least he can' t get me here.
A woozy feeling came over him as he sat there and inspected the raw pulp of tissue under the shreds of his wet suit. Down his left leg and along his arms were wounds that gaped to the bone. From the deep laceration above the knee, he judged that the shark had mangled the muscle. Blood spurted from a cut in the crook of his left arm. The shark had severed an artery. He had escaped its jaws, but now he could bleed to death in minutes.
He clamped the gash firmly with his right hand, and thrust the arm above his head. Blood must have been spouting out of the arm since the attack. Already the loss was making him faint.