They had the scent and were excited and in the stupidity of their great hunger they were losing and finding the scent in their excitement.
But they were closing all the time.
The old man made the sheet fast and jammed the tiller.
Then he took up the oar with the knife lashed to it.
He lifted it as lightly as he could because his hands rebelled at the pain.
Then he opened and closed them on it lightly to loosen them.
He closed them firmly so they would take the pain now and would not flinch and watched the sharks come.
He could see their wide, flattened, shovel-pointed heads now and their white-tipped wide pectoral fins.
They were hateful sharks, bad smelling, scavengers as well as killers, and when they were hungry they would bite at an oar or the rudder of a boat.
It was these sharks that would cut the turtles' legs and flippers off when the turtles were asleep on the surface, and they would hit a man in the water, if they were hungry, even if the man had no smell of fish blood nor of fish slime on him.