And next moment the Admiral was perched there, as coolly as if he had been used to riding on sharks ever since his babyhood.
But Nelda was in tears. She would never see the ’Ral again, and the awful beast would eat him, sea-legs and all. So a boat was called away to save him.
None too soon either. For the ’Ral had commenced to investigate that fin with his long beak. No respectable basking shark could be expected to stand that, so down he dived, leaving the bird screaming and swaying and scrambling on the top of the water. “Scray—scray—craik—craik—cray!”
But for the timely aid of the boat, the Admiral would have met with a terrible fate, for his screaming and struggling brought around him three sharks at least, all eager to find out what a long-legged bird like this tasted like.
Every fine day the crane now indulged himself in the pleasure of flight, but he never evinced the slightest inclination to perch again on the back of a basking shark. It wasn’t good enough, he would have told you, had you asked him. “As regards the backs of basking sharks,” he might have said, “I’m going to be a total abstainer.”
Up the east coast of Africa went the bonnie barque Sea Flower.
Tandy knew almost every yard of the ground he was now covering, and could pilot the vessel into creeks and over sand-banks or bars with very little danger indeed.
But still the coast here is so treacherous, and the sands and bottom change so frequently, that, night and day, men had to be in the chains heaving the lead.
The natives, also, across the line in Somaliland, are as treacherous as the coral rocks that guard their clay-built towns, and more treacherous than either are the semi-white, slave-dealing Arabs.