"The shark who hides and runs away May live to bite another day."
Teddy was the perpetrator of the lines.
Fred groaned and, as he made a pa.s.s at his brother with his unoccupied hand, asked: "What have we done that such awful stuff should be pulled off on us?"
"Hi, there!" shouted Bill suddenly. "I saw something just then."
"Hang out the flags," drawled Fred unbelievingly. "Bill saw something."
"He saw the sea, he saw the sky, He saw the drifting clouds go by,"
chanted Teddy, the irrepressible.
"I"d see a couple of b.o.o.bs, if I looked over your way," retorted Bill.
"Cut out the chatter and hand me those gla.s.ses."
The binoculars were pa.s.sed over to him, and he turned them on an object far out to starboard.
"I thought so," he said exultingly a moment later. "I can see the dorsal fin of a shark out there."
Disbelief vanished before his confident tone, and all looked eagerly in the direction he indicated.
"Perhaps it"s only a floating bit of wood," said Teddy doubtfully, after a long gaze through the gla.s.ses.
"Let Lester look," suggested Bill. "He knows a shark when he sees one."
Lester relinquished the tiller to Bill and took a long, steady look through the binoculars.
"Bill is right," he announced at last. "It"s a shark and a big one too.
I guess we"re going to have some sport, after all."
"But how are we going to get a trial at him?" cried Teddy. "He seems to be going in the opposite direction."
"I guess he won"t go far," replied Lester with easy confidence. "This is probably his feeding ground, and he"ll keep going round and round in lazy circles. We"ll get a little nearer to him before we do anything else."
He retook the tiller and changed the _Ariel"s_ course toward the spot where they had seen the shark.
"Lower the sail, now," he commanded, when they had gone half a mile.
"Just keep up enough to give us steerage way. A shark thinks a boat"s disabled when it isn"t moving much, and his instinct teaches him that the occupants are probably in trouble and his chance of finally getting them will be better."
"Do you think that will bring him around?" asked Bill.
"It"ll help, anyway," replied Lester. "But to make it surer, we"ll cut up the pork into small pieces and scatter it on the water. He"ll smell it as sure as guns, and I"ll wager you that before ten minutes are over you"ll see the old rascal swimming toward us."
The boys got their clasp knives out at once and slashed the pork into bits, taking care however not to touch the big piece.
"He"s coming," cried Teddy, after perhaps five minutes had pa.s.sed. "I saw his fin just then, not fifty feet away."
The pieces of pork were now bobbing up and down on the water at the stern of the _Ariel_, which had almost stopped moving.
There was a twitch and one of the pieces disappeared. For an instant the boys saw a long black body, the wet skin glistening in the rays of the sun like so much velvet.
"By jinks!" whispered Bill in awe. "What an old sockdolager!"
"He"s one of the biggest I"ve ever seen," returned Lester. "Fellows of his size don"t get up this way very often."
"I"d hate to fall overboard just now," said Teddy.
"You"d make just about one mouthful for him," was Fred"s comforting rejoinder.
Lester was making feverish haste in the task of preparing the hook. He sank it deep into the yielding pork, so that the point was at least six inches from any surface.
"Suppose he nibbles it off," suggested Bill.
"Sharks don"t eat that way," grinned Lester. "They"re gluttons, and if they bite at all they take everything down--hook, line and sinker."
"I"m afraid we couldn"t hold him if we did hook him," said Teddy. "He"d yank us overboard in a minute."
"I"ll take care of that," replied Lester, at the same time taking several turns around the mast with the slack of the rope. "He"ll have to pull the mast out of the _Ariel_ to get away."
By this time all the floating bits of pork had been snapped up by this cormorant of the sea.
"He seems to like our lunch counter," laughed Teddy.
"We"ve made him a steady customer, I guess," returned Bill.
"Well, if he likes the samples, we"ll show him some of the real goods,"
chimed in Lester, as he prepared to throw the baited hook overboard.
Just then the shark appeared, swimming lazily under the counter of the boat. He was just under the surface, and his gla.s.sy, wicked eyes looked full in the faces of the boys as they crowded to the side.
"My, he"s a terror!" exclaimed Teddy, as the pirate of the seas slowly moved past. "Is he going away do you think?" he asked in alarm, as their intended prey vanished in the direction of the bow.
"No fear," responded Lester cheerily. "The pickings round here are too good for him to think of going away just yet."
"Why don"t you wait till he comes around again and then make a throw at him with the harpoon?" asked Bill. "I should think you might hit him."
"Wouldn"t have a chance on earth," was the answer. "He"d dodge it like a flash of lightning. Then he"d take alarm and make a quick sneak away from here. After we get him hooked, we can hold him steady and I"ll have a chance to take aim."
With a mighty heave, Lester threw the hook as far as he could over the stern. The iron chain attached to it hung several inches under the water, but its buoyancy kept the huge chunk of pork floating on the surface.
For several minutes the boys waited, their hearts beating so hard that it almost seemed that they could be heard.
"Do you think he"s really cleared out and left us?" asked Teddy, with disappointment in his tone.
"Don"t worry," was Lester"s encouraging reply. "He thinks he has too soft a snap here to dream of giving it up."
Just then Teddy"s question was answered by the shark himself. There was a swish in the water on the other side of the boat, and the boys saw that ominous fin sweep past.