“Better? Here!” I cried as a flash of recollection came back, “where’s the shark?”
“Floating alongside,” said the doctor, wiping the great drops of perspiration from his forehead.
I pulled myself up and looked over the side, where the great fish was floating quite dead, with one of the sailors making fast a line round the thin part of the tail.
“Why, I know,” I cried; “he dragged me down.”
It was all plain enough now. The captain had fitted a lanyard to the shaft of the lance, so that it should not be lost, and I had got this twisted round one of my wrists in such a way that I was literally snatched out of the boat when it tightened; and I felt a strange kind of shudder run through me as the doctor went on to say softly:
“I had begun to give you up, Joe, my boy.”
“Only the shark give it up as a bad job, my lad. That stroke of yours finished him, and he come up just in time for us to get you into the boat and pump the wind into you again—leastwise the doctor did.”
“The best way to restore respiration, captain.”
“When you’ve tried my plan first, my lad,” replied the captain. “What is it drowns folks, eh? Why, water. Too much water, eh? Well, my plan is to hold up head down’ards and feet in the air till all the salt-water has runned out.”
“The surest way to kill a half-drowned person, captain,” said the doctor authoritatively.