Moby Dick

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"O master, my master, come back!"

But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then; and the
boat leaped on.

Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship, when
numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters beneath
the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every time they
dipped in the water; and in this way accompanied the boat with their
bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats in
those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently following them in
the same prescient way that vultures hover over the banners of marching
regiments in the east. But these were the first sharks that had been
observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had been first descried;
and whether it was that Ahab's crew were all such tiger-yellow
barbarians, and therefore their flesh more musky to the senses of the
sharks--a matter sometimes well known to affect them,--however it was,