The dinghy was rowed out to a part of the bay which was known to Willatopy as good shark country, and the boy busied himself in tying scraps of cord to the grips of the daggers and to his own wrists. He wanted to make sure that the daggers would not get adrift when he opened his hands in swimming, and would be ready in place at the moment when his fists closed. He was not excited in the least degree; his one feeling was a mild desire to test the efficiency of trench daggers as shark killers. When he had brought the lifeboat through the big rollers on the bar, he had been visibly exalted; now on the eve of shark killing he was no more than placidly interested in the efficacy of his twin daggers.
He slipped over the side of the dinghy, and the rowers lay on their oars. He had told them to give him room, at least a hundred yards, lest the sharks might be frightened away. I think that that direction eased Madame's mind more than all his previous protestations. Sharks must be far less terrible than she had supposed if they could be frightened away by a dinghy.
Madame, herself a good swimmer by European standards, watched Willie amazed. She had never supposed that a human being could swim with that perfect ease and swift smoothness. His brown body lay down in the water as if it loved it, and a bow wave rose and curled over the almost buried head. He swam on his side with a tremendous reach forward and thrust of his powerful right arm, and the drive of his legs was a revelation in the possibilities of marine propulsion. Madame could not see how he breathed, for his head was cuddled down on the left shoulder, though breathe he must have done somehow.
"I can't properly describe it," said Madame to me afterwards. "He was a human torpedo. He went forward in one continuous smooth rush with that clear bow wave curling over his head."
At a little distance, which to Madame looked too far for safety—she still placed an emergency trust in the dugong spear—Willatopy's head rose up and he stopped. Balancing himself in the water by imperceptible movements of hands and legs, Willatopy was hanging out his body as a bait for timid sharks. It was not long before one swooped down upon so attractive a prey. Madame saw the feather of water flung up by a black moving fin, while Willatopy, peering far down into the clear waters of the bay, was on the alert against an attack more subtle.
"Silly beast," murmured he, and his fists tightened on the trench daggers. The black fin ran up and then disappeared as the shark rolled over to strike upwards with those triple rows of teeth which are set at some distance behind and below the snout. A shark must attack its prey belly upwards, and strike from below; if its mouth were in its snout like a crocodile's it would be a much more dangerous foe. The shark rolled over and struck upwards. Willatopy's head vanished, his brown body curled over lazily, and he dived exactly as a dolphin dives. A long swooping flash downwards. The shark broke the surface where Willie's head had been, and Willatopy reappeared where the black fin had been. Shark and boy had changed places, and, if Madame had been nearer, she might have seen the grin spread out on Willatopy's face. The shark twisted its long body about, again rolled over and again struck upwards. Grinning contemptuously, Willatopy slipped downwards under the rising shark, and appeared again behind its tail.
"Why doesn't he kill the brute?" muttered Madame.
"I don't rightly understand," replied the man with the fatuous spear.
"It looks 'orrible dangersome to me, ma'am. I can't 'ardly believe the nigger boy will come back alive."