“Well, sir,” said Davie, laughing, “if you had seen the monster shark that Barclay and I saw yesterday, you would not have said there was much delicacy of constitution about him. With head and back all decorated with seaweed, and his cruel, sinful-looking eyes glaring through it, he looked a veritable fiend of the ocean wave.”
“Ah! but these sharks, you know, are the regular inhabitants, and if you have noticed, they are all dark brown like the seaweed itself. We shall see more of them, and catch many too, when we lower our diving lift.”
“Catch some?”
“Yes, the more the merrier. You see, boys, their oil will be a substitute for fuel and save the coals.”
“Is there much oil under the skin?”
“Mostly in and around the liver, lads, and there it is found in great abundance. You shall see for yourselves.”
. . . . . .
“What are you so busily engaged at?” said Barclay next day, as he entered the captain’s canvas workshop.
Here not only two sailors were busily engaged, but Sister Leona herself.
“We are making a captive balloon,” was the answer.