"Put me ashore quick, then."
The girl was soon standing on the bank and the chase was renewed. A hundred yards farther up the narrow stream the great sawfish was found swimming slowly across a bank where the water was shoal, with his two fins and tail showing in line above the water. As the harpoon pole was lifted and Dick's every muscle strained for the throw, the captain shouted:
"Throw three feet ahead of that forward fin. That's where his back is."
The harpoon struck the fish in the middle of his wide back and as the freed pole splashed in the water the sawfish made a mighty swirl and was off at express speed. The line was strong, the barb of the harpoon was under the tough leather of the creature's back, and the skiff seemed to fly through the water as Dick gave the line a turn around his hand and the captain fended the skiff from the banks when sharp turns were made by the flying fish as it followed the channels of the crooked creeks. Sometimes the stream broadened, often it narrowed; once the sawfish dashed through an overgrown waterway where Dick and the captain crouched to the gunwale to avoid the arching branches that swept over and tore at the sides of the skiff. There was half an hour of this work. Dick's hands were blistered and numb and his brain dizzy with the quick turns and changing courses of the fish, when suddenly he became panic-stricken and called to his companion:
"Captain! Are you perfectly sure you know where you are? Sure you can find Miss Barstow?"
The captain laughed.
"Find her? Why she's here within a hundred feet of you now."
And, sure enough, the next turn in the creek showed the girl standing on the bank by the water's edge.
"Can't I get aboard?" she called out as the skiff swept past, and Dick would have said "Yes," but the captain shook his head.