Chapter 15

CAPTURING THE SHARK

"Where on earth did you get that harpoon?" asked Fred.

"It belongs to father," was Lester's answer. "He shipped on board a whaler once and made a three-year cruise. He was the head harpooner of the first mate's boat and many's the time this old harpoon has struck a ninety barrel whale. Dad has any number of yarns to spin about it, and some day I'll set him going and you'll hear them all."

"That'll be dandy!" exclaimed Teddy. "There's nothing stirs me up so much as a whaling story. I've often thought I'd like to make a voyage on a whaler when I am old enough."

"There's a good deal of romance and excitement about it," admitted Lester, "but it's very hard and dangerous work. A man takes his life in his hands when he ships for such a cruise."

"This certainly looks as though it meant business," commented Bill, as he examined curiously the broad, flat, triangular head. "The edge is like a razor, and nothing could pull this barb loose after it once entered."

The shank was about two feet long and served as a socket to the shaft which gave a total length to the harpoon of more than six feet.

"My, but it's heavy," said Fred, as he lifted it. "It must take some muscle to handle a thing like that."

"It takes a good deal of experience to master it," said Lester.

"Do you know how to throw it?" asked Teddy.

"Father has shown me how, and I've practised a good deal on and off just for fun," was the reply. "I might be able to hit a shark with it, if he wasn't very far off, and I might not. I'd have a chance though, and if I missed I could try again. This rope attached to it prevents its being lost, and I could draw it in again and make another attempt at it.

"Of course this is rather old fashioned these days," Lester went on. "Now, in most of the whaling boats, they put the harpoon in a gun, just as you might thrust a ramrod down the muzzle of a rifle. The harpoon has an explosive shell attached to its head like the torpedo of a submarine. The harpoon is shot from the gun, and after it leaves the muzzle, a rocket charge attached to it carries it still further. When it hits the whale, the bomb explodes and it's all over. Of course, it's safer and surer than the old way, but it's too much like business. It does away with the exciting, desperate struggle between man and whale."

"What stories this old weapon could tell, if it could only talk," mused Fred.

"Yes, and they'd be more exciting than anything you read in fiction," added Bill.

"We may have a chance to use it before the day is over," said Teddy hopefully, as he looked over the waves on every side.

"It's a bare possibility," assented Lester. "I thought it wouldn't do any harm to bring it along anyhow just on the chance.

"You fellows want to keep a keen lookout for anything that looks like a fin," he continued. "It would be too bad to let any guilty shark escape."

As Lester had charge of the tiller and Fred was looking after the sail, the work of watching devolved on Teddy and Bill. They took opposite sides of the craft, Teddy handling Mr. Lee's binoculars while Bill depended upon the remarkably keen eyes with which nature had gifted him.

An hour went by, during which the little boat made rapid progress. But nothing rewarded the vigil of the two, and Teddy began to grow disgusted.

"Nothing doing to-day, I guess," he grumbled. "Somebody's sent a wireless to the sharks telling them to keep out of sight."

"And after Lester has taken all that trouble in getting a warm welcome ready for them," mourned Fred.

"It's certainly very ungrateful on their part," grinned Bill.

"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 pass 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 boobs, if I looked over your way," retorted Bill. "Cut out the chatter and hand me those glasses."

The binoculars were passed 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 glasses.

"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 passed. "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 glassy, 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.

The shark made straight for the hook with its tempting bait. But he sniffed at it a moment and then commenced to swim slowly around it in wide circles.

"He's a little bit suspicious," whispered Lester. "This is so much bigger than the others that it seems too good to be true."

For several minutes the great fish kept up his circular movement, but the onlookers noticed that the circles were steadily growing smaller.

"He can't resist it!" exulted Fred. "His judgment tells him he'd better not, but his appetite urges him on."

"From what I know of sharks, I'll wager that his appetite will win," chuckled Lester.

Suddenly the shark seemed to reach a decision. Like a flash he darted toward the bait and it disappeared in his rapacious maw.

"Hurrah!" yelled Teddy in uncontrollable excitement. "He's hooked at last!"