" ...... 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 [... and ...] they seemed to follow that one boat without molesting the others."
For Melville and his readers, three is freighted with religous significance. For Benchley the number of days was most likely arrived at for pragmatic reasons. Elements of the plot which required resolution on land (Larry Vaughn's pathetic farewell, Ellen's rather pat recognition of "the richness of her life", Harry Meadows's belated vindication of Chief Brody's actions) meant that the author- unlike the filmmaker- could not keep his characters at sea. In the book the Orca returns to dock each evening: Brody goes home to an increasingly hysterical wife, Quint most likely counts his money ("Cash. Every day. In advance."), and Hooper no doubt eats alone at the the Abelard Arms.
On the afternoon of the first day Quint eviscerates a hooked blue shark, slitting its belly "from anal fin to just below the jaw". The fish's entrails - red, white and blue, like the colours of the American flag - tumble into the ocean "like laundry falling from a basket." Tossed back into the sea the dying fish snaps at and devours its own innards, and the blooming "cloud of blood" attracts more sharks until - just like the ocean around Ahab's whaleboat - the water is boiling with them:
"Brody couldn't tell how many sharks there were in the explosion of water. Fins crisscrossed on the surface, tails whipped the water. Amid the sounds of splashes came an occasional grunt as fish slammed into fish. Brody looked down at his shirt and saw that it was spattered with water and blood."
The description of this feeding frenzy invites us to make direct parallels with the dog-eat-dog mentality of Amity's parasitic community. As Harry Meadows put it in the previous chapter: "The host animal comes every summer, and Amity feeds on it furiously, pulling every bit of sustenance it can ..."
Brody's stained shirt becomes an emblem of his own culpability- just as Norman Bates's bloodied hands are an emblem of his suppressed guilt.
Readers who have been paying attention will know that the feeding frenzy is also indicative of something else. Back at the beginning of Chapter Seven Hooper invokes the book's working title when he explains to Brody: "If there was a big white in the neighbourhood, everything else would vanish. That's one of the things divers say about whites. When they're around, there's an awful stillness in the water." The presence of the sharks making a lot of commotion around the Orca means that Mr Whitey is unlikely to make an appearance in this chapter.
