CHAPTER XXI.

VICTORY COMES TO NICK.

"Whoop! here I go, fellers!" shouted Nick, as, scrambling awkwardly to his feet, he hurried along the beach toward the spot where he had left his shark line.

Of course the rest hastened to follow after him. They found the fat boy bending down and feeling of the taut rope.

"Gee whittaker! but I've caught the biggest ever, I do believe!" Nick was crying. "Just feel that line, would you? Acts like it had hold of a house, with the tide running out. Say, it'll take me all night to get that monster ashore; but I'll do it; you hear me warble, Jimmy, I'll do it!"

"Good for you, Nick!" laughed Jack.

"We'll back you up to win out, if you only keep everlastingly at it," remarked Herb.

"And don't be afther forgettin' the rules of the game, all of ye," warned Jimmy. "Nobody must put a finger on the loine to hilp Nick. I want to see him have fair play, so I do. And, by the same token, if he bates me by three hundred pounds, I'll be the firrst gossoon to congratulate him on his success. You know that, boys."

"Sure we do, Jimmy," spoke up George.

"It wouldn't be like you not to do the same," declared Josh.

"You know what you've just got to do, Nick," remarked Jack.

"Guess I do," chuckled the owner of the outfit, as he looked eagerly out over the darkening water to that point toward which the taut line seemed to extend; but if he entertained a faint hope that the prisoner would leap into view while trying to get rid of the steel barb, he mistook the nature of the shark, which bores deep, and tries to do by main strength what a tarpon, a trout, a salmon or a black bass attempts by that upward fling, and shake of the head.

"He's going it pretty furious right now," Josh observed.

"Yes, and the harder he pulls the better," Nick said. "That'll help to tire the old chap out, and make it easier for poor me to get him ashore, foot by foot, by making use of my snubbing post here. But let's go back and finish our supper, boys. If the hook holds, and the rope is as good as I think, he'll be here tugging away an hour from now, just as much as he is now."

"That's where your head's level, Nick," commented Jack.

And so the whole party wended their way back to where the camp-fire blazed on the shore. Here the pleasant task of finishing their meal was once more resumed. Some of them thought Nick was really devouring even more than usual, though that might be hard to believe.

"He wants to get his strength up to top-notch!" laughed Herb.

"Well," observed Nick, calmly, as he reached deliberately over, and took the last helping of Boston baked beans from the tin kettle in which they had been heated for the meal; "I hate to see things go to waste; and there are some fellers around who don't seem to know what's good."

"I've noticed," Josh remarked, drily, "that you don't mind how much goes to _your_ waist, all right."

Nick only groaned at the pun, and went on cleaning out his platter, as though he believed in always laying in a healthy supply of food, since nobody could tell when another chance might come around.

Afterwards they lay about the camp and told stories, joked and even sang school songs. Nick seemed in no great hurry to take up the task that awaited him. He knew from former experiences just what it meant. But that the subject was on his mind all the while was made manifest from what he said.

"Jack, I want to ask you a question!" he began.

"Well, fire away, then," suggested the other, with a nod of invitation.

"If, now, this fellow at the end of my line turns out to be so heavy that I just can't budge him, when I get the chump at the edge of the water, would it be breaking the rules if I borrowed that block and tackle to help yank him out, so you can all see him, and estimate his weight?"

"How about that, fellows?" asked Jack, looking around with a wink toward the other chums.

"Why, of course he can make use of any means, so long as no other person lends a hand to assist him," George gave as his opinion.

"That's what!" Josh added.

"If he goes and gets the falls and fixes the whole blooming business himself, of course he's got the right to do it," declared Herb.

"And I do be saying that it's a clever schame, that does Nick credit," was the verdict of Jimmy.

"That settles it, then, Nick," Jack decided. "It's unanimous, you hear; and if you want, you can go and get the block and tackle arranged right now."

"Oh! do you think, then, I'll surely need it, Jack?" asked the fat boy, trembling with joyous anticipations; for from the tenor of Jack's words he expected that they all believed he had caught the biggest of sharks, one that would make that little porpoise of Jimmy's look like a baby.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you did," Jack replied, with a reassuring nod.

Accordingly, after he had cleaned off his pannikin, and not a second sooner, Nick hunted up the rope and blocks with which they had hauled the _Comfort_ out on skids at the time of her accident.

By a skillful use of such an apparatus, one man's strength is made equal to that of several; and the boys had learned this fact through actual experience.

"Let us know when you expect to get busy," called out Herb, as Nick went off with the falls.

"Yes, because we want to enjoy it all, you know, Nick," sang out George.

Perhaps half an hour passed, with the fat boy busily engaged getting his apparatus ready. Then they heard him give a call.

"Hi! hello, there! fellers; suppose somebody starts a fire agoing for me here; that's allowable, ain't it, Jack?" he demanded.

"Why, of course, since it hasn't anything to do with getting the shark ashore," the one addressed responded, as all of them jumped up.

"I'm ready to begin yanking him in now; but it's so pesky gloomy I ain't able to see just right," Nick continued. "It'd be a shame now if I lost this dandy chap just because I didn't see how to work him."

Some of the boys gathered dead leaf stalks from under a nearby palmetto, and in next to no time they had a fine, ruddy blaze crackling close by the spot where Nick was standing, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and an air of grim determination about his whole person.

The first thing he did was to make sure the rope went twice around the snubbing post, so that he might always have a hitch. Then he fastened the end of the rope belonging to the falls to the strained fish line, a dozen feet beyond the snubbing post.

His operations were watched with considerable interest by his mates, who realized that quite a transformation was rapidly taking place in the character of the once placid and indolent fat boy.

"Here goes, then!" exclaimed Nick, as he threw his full weight on the rope that went through the several blocks.

They could hear him grunting at a great rate, which indicated what an effort it was to get the shark started shoreward against his will.

"Bully! he's beginning to make it!" whooped George, greatly excited.

"Hurrah for Nick!" shouted Josh.

"Walk away with it, me bhoy!" cried Jimmy, as though quite forgetting that success for Nick meant defeat for him.

The stout fisherman was indeed doing just what Jimmy advised, and walking away with things. When he had gone as far as he could, he managed to whip the rope around some object. Then, returning to the now slack fishing line, above the spot where he had fastened the falls, he drew it taut around the snubbing post.

"He gained at least ten feet that time," declared Jack.

"But, oh! my! ain't the old terror mad, though?" exclaimed George. "Just see how he pulls, would you, boys?"

"Give him another turn, Nick," advised Jack.

Unfastening the falls, Nick took the second hitch, and as before this was some distance below the snubbing post.

Again he bent his stout back, and, aided by the tackle, he succeeded in bringing the struggling sea monster closer in to the shore.

Everything was working smoothly, and by the time he had repeated his effort a good many times they could see from the terrific splashing that the prisoner was already in shoal water.

"Do you think I'm going to get him?" gasped poor, winded Nick, as he wiped his streaming forehead, and tried to get ready for the hardest tug of all; for, with a dead weight on the sand to haul, he could no longer count on the buoyancy of the water.

"Well, I should smile, yes," declared George. "At him again, Ginger; never say die! Set 'em up in the other alley! This is a great treat to us, Nick, I tell you!"

But Nick was already busy. With the rope over his shoulder, and his toes digging in the sand, he tugged away like a good fellow, gaining inch by inch. This time he succeeded in dragging the shark all the way out of the water, so that it lay exposed to their view.

"Hurroo! he done it!" shouted Jimmy, with an utter disregard for the rules of grammar, that would have horrified his teachers, had any of them heard him; but Jimmy had one set of rules to mark his vacation manners, and another covering his connection with the seats of learning; and when he wished could talk just as correctly as the next one.

They gathered around, full of wonder at the size and ferocity of the monster, that even then lay there on the sand, snapping savagely at everything.

"Will it beat Jimmy's porpoise?" asked Nick, proudly.

"Half again as heavy!" declared Jack; "for I reckon it must weigh all of four hundred pounds."