At this Sven Orlaff shook his head again. “No land near dis blace,” he said. “No much boats here.”
“No land and very few ships,” said Mark. “Frank, it is certainly a dismal outlook.”
They saw that the Norwegian’s shoulder needed to be bound up and went at the work without delay, tearing the sleeves from their shirts for this purpose. He was thankful, and told them so in his own peculiar way.
The work had scarcely been accomplished when something odd happened. Frank had allowed an end of the rope to trail behind the raft. Now the rope was seized by some kind of a fish who swallowed the knot. Like a flash the Norwegian sailor pulled in the rope, landed the fish and smashed its head with his heel.
“Make to eat,” he explained. “I hungry.”
“Why, of course,” cried Mark. “I’m hungry myself. I wonder if we can’t catch more of them?”
For answer the sailor pulled a stout fishline from his pocket, and also a knife. With the knife he cut off a portion of the fish’s tail for bait.
“Give it to me, I’ll do the fishing,” said Mark, for he did not want the hurt man to use his wounded shoulder.
Luckily for them, fish were plentiful in that vicinity, and in a moment he got a bite and landed another fish, weighing at least two pounds. Then he tried again and again, and soon had a mess of a dozen.
“We shall not starve to death, that’s sure,” said Frank, who had fixed a place between the lumber for the catch. “I wish, Mark, you could catch something else.”