Dragging it out of the waves was one thing; wrestling it, still alive, onto the deck of the ship was quite another. The Emperor, interrupted in dictating his memoirs below deck, hearing the shouting above, climbed up onto the poop deck, where the Bertrand children and Emmanuel, the fifteen-year-old son of Las Cases, had gathered at a safe distance to watch. The admiral’s warning cry came too late, for as Napoleon approached to examine the patterning on the creature’s dorsal fin, the shark, now in its death throes and gasping for air, brought that tail across the deck in a final spasm, knocking over five sailors and the Emperor. When Las Cases, his son, and the two generals rushed to pull Napoleon out from under the tail of the now-dead shark, they were certain the impact had broken both his legs, for the Emperor’s cream-colored breeches were covered in blood. It was Emmanuel Las Cases who pointed out that the blood had in fact come from the shark. The Emperor, visibly shaken but only bruised, was carried back to his cabin, where his surgeon attended him.
