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The caloon under thereat fountainlike gush burst into the air, followed by the great white shark The murderous beast thrashed about wildly, its awesoe sea serpent that was coiled around it

Everyone clutching the floating wreckage stared dule between the two monsters of the deep

Froood seat to observe the struggle The body of the enor, tapering tail Scaggs estith of the body to be sixty to sixty-five feet, with the circue flour barrel The mouth on the end of the head opened and closed spaslike teeth The skin appeared smooth and was a dark brown on the upper surface of the body, als had often heard tales of ships sighting serpentine sea hed the toonow as he watched the once-feared Executioner writhe violently in a futile attempt to shake off its deadly attacker

The coinous body of the shark prevented it froh backward to bite into the serpent Despite its treth and its frenzied convulsions, it could not shake the death grip Revolving around in coreat speed, shark and serpent writhed beneath the surface before reappearing in an explosion of spray that beat the water into froth again

The serpent then began biting into the shark's gill slits After another few onized struggle ceased and the two ht in the deepest part of the lagoon The hunter had become the meal of another hunter

Scaggs wasted no tiled convicts fro together Stunned by what they had witnessed, the pitifully few survivors finally reached the white sandy beach and staggered ashore, carried at last frohtmare world to a Garden of Eden as yet unknown to European mariners

A stream of pure water was soon found that ran from the volcanic mountain that rose above the southern end of the island Five different varieties of tropical fruit grew in the forested area, and the lagoon was teeinal 231 who set out on the raft of the Gladiator lived to tell about the horrors of their fifteen days adrift in the sweltering emptiness of the sea

Six ic loss of the Gladiator, itsashore to repair a leak in his s fro the object froe of an ancient warrior

He carried the wooden sculpture fifty miles north to Auckland, New Zealand, where it was identified as the figurehead of the lost clipper ship Gladiator

Eventually cleaned and refinished, the warrior was placed in a small maritime museum, where onlookers often stared at it and pondered the mystery of the ship's disappearance

The enigma of the clipper ship Gladiator was finally explained in July of 1858 by an article that ran in the Sydney Morning Herald

RETURN FROM THE DEAD

The seas around Australia have witnessed e as the sudden appearance of Captain Charles "Bully" Scaggs, reportedand presumed dead when his clipper, the Gladiator, owners Carlisle & Dunhill of Inverness, vanished in the Tas the terrible typhoon of January 1856 when only 300 miles southeast of Sydney

Captain Scaggs astonished everyone by sailing into Sydney Harbor in a s crew their sojourn on an uncharted island

The ship's figurehead, washed up on the west coast of New Zealand one and a half years ago, confirs' miraculous return, no word on how his ship was lost or the fate of the 192 convicts being transported to the penal colony or the 11 soldiers and 28 creas known