"I know what a shark is, if you mean that," answered young Jack.
"Rather," said Harry, with a shudder at old recollections "we had a white one after us once."
"A white shark!" said Mr. Mole, beaming upon the boat's crew generally. "Squalus Carcharias, the worst of the family."
"They aren't got no families, axing your pardon, Mr. Mole, sir," said Joe Basalt, "for they eats their own mothers and fathers and children likewise."
"Why, Bill Longbow told me a yarn once, your honour," said Sam Mason, "about a white shark. I mean," he added, nodding at Mr. Mole respectfully, "a squally cockylorium—a blessed rum name for a shark—as devoured all his family for dinner, supped off a Sunday school out for a pleasure-trip in a steamboat, and was a-goin' to wind up with a meal off his own blessed self, when his dexter fin stuck in his swaller, and he brought hisself up ag'in."
A general laugh greeted this sally.
So boisterous was their mirth, that it caught the occupants of the other boat.
"That's Sam Mason at one of his Billy Longbow's yarns," cried a sailor in the pinnace.
"So you had a white shark after you in the water," said Mr. Mole. "Rather unpleasant that."
"It was indeed unpleasant at such close quarters," said Harry Girdwood.