Another too many incomprehensibles

Another too many incomprehensibles

The passage below is from Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Giggs.

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Surfers arrived in the early hours... I woke and brushed a second skin of pearly sand off my cheek, my shoulder, one thigh. Were those sharks, raiding a lux channel tipped up by the moon? Hard to tell. We resolved that the whale had been washed too high on the beach for any shark to reach it....

By sunrise, a part of the whale that ought not to be outside of it, was outside of it. A digestive organ, frilled and bluish in the foam. The whale’s billiard-ball eyes tumbled in its head, and its breathing sounded laboured. The sharks slid into vapour, a squinting rumour. No blood on the tideline. People stayed back from the water’s edge nonetheless.

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Here I am a volunteer who wants to help save a stranded whale. I took a light sleep on the sand and woke to the sounds of surfers. Still not completely woken, worrying about the whale, I mistook surfers for sharks to kill it. But that isn’t possible.

Here’s my questions.

In ‘The sharks slid into vapour’, the sharks implies the surfers mentioned above?

If I’m right, that is, if the sharks means surfers, what does it mean ‘to slid into vapour’? Do they disappear into some kind of mist or steam?

Last but not least, what does a squinting rumour mean?

Squint means to look sideways.

Rumor means gossip passed around verbally.

But what does a squinting rumour means?

P.S. It is said that “The sharks slid into vapour, a squinting rumour.” comes quoted from a Polish poem, but I cannot present the source. Sorry about that.

Thanks a lot in advance.