“Ah! would yer!” shouted Rogers; and the men roared with laughter. “This here’s fishing with your own legs for bait,” continued the young sailor. “Well, it’s got to be who’s sharpest—him or me.”
“I think you had better not venture,” said Syd, hesitating again.
“Oh! don’t say that, sir. We shall all be horrid disappointed if we don’t get him.”
“But see what a narrow escape you had.”
“Well, yes, sir; I wasn’t quite sharp enough, but there was no harm done.”
“Go on,” said Syd, unwillingly, as he caught Roylance’s eye; and hurrying by for fear that the permission should be withdrawn, the man stepped quickly back on to the beam, keeping a sharp look-out to right and left.
“I see you, you beggar,” he said; “come on.”
The shark accepted the invitation, and made quite a leap, passing over the beam again, diving down, snowing his white, and swam twenty feet away, to turn with difficulty amongst the submerged timber forward, and returned aiming clumsily at the white legs which tempted him, but missing his goal, for the young sailor nimbly leaped ashore.
“I shan’t get him that way,” he said. “Here, give us something white.”
There was nothing white handy but blocks of coral, and Rogers solved the difficulty by selecting a hat and taking a handspike.