“What sort of an animal is that?” asked Tom. He spoke before he thought, and was provoked at himself for it. He did not want to be constantly asking information of a boy who never came to him for any. As Tom would have expressed it: “He didn’t care to make Joe and his friends any more conceited than they were already.” Joe, however, was not at all conceited; but if Tom Bigden had known as much as he did, and been as expert in all sorts of athletic sports, he would have thought himself too grand to associate with common fellows.
“The caribou is the American reindeer, but it is not broken to harness like the European animal of the same species,” replied Joe. “It is hunted as game, and Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland are the best places to go to find it. Uncle Joe went up there two years ago, taking Hastings, Sheldon and myself with him. We went in a little fishing schooner that was bound from Gloucester to the Bay of Fundy for swordfish.”
Tom would have been glad to know where the Bay of Fundy was, and what the schooner’s crew intended to do with the swordfish after they caught them, but his pride would not let him ask. The sequel proved that it was not necessary, for Joe went on to explain.
“The Bay of Fundy runs up between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, as you of course know as well as I do, and the fish are used for food. When they are put on the market they are sliced up like halibut. They are caught with harpoons. They are ugly, I tell you, and when one of them weighing four hundred pounds comes flopping over the rail and begins to swing that sword of his around like lightning, you may be sure that he gets all the room he wants.”
“What do you do with the swords after they are taken off?”
“Keep them as curiosities or sell them, just as you please. There is great demand for them. I have one that I should not like to part with. It belonged to a two hundred pounder. The sailors thought they had killed him before they hauled him aboard; but he gave one expiring flop after he reached the deck, and the point of his sword cut a big hole in the leg of my trowsers. If I had been a little closer to him, he might have injured me very badly. If a man had his only weapon of offense and defense made fast to his nose, he wouldn’t do much with it, would he? But it just suits the swordfish, which, according to Captain Davis, delivers his blows so rapidly that he will kill half a dozen out of a school of albicore before they can get out of his reach.”
“But what has all this got to do with Mars?” inquired Tom.
“I came pretty near forgetting about him, didn’t I?” said Joe, with a laugh. “Well, we went back to Gloucester with Captain Davis, who, as soon as he had disposed of his swordfish, fitted out for the banks—for codfish, you know—and went with him. He was to land us at some little fishing hamlet, whose name I have forgotten, where we were to obtain guides and go back into the interior after caribou; but he managed to run the schooner ashore in a thick fog, and there we stuck until Mars brought off a line to us. That was all that saved us. The sailors hauled in on it, and finally brought aboard a larger and stronger line to which a hawser was made fast. We took a turn with that around the capstan, and after a good deal of hard work, succeeded in pulling the schooner over the bar into deeper water nearer the shore. We got off just in the nick of time, too; for that night a storm came up, and raised a sea that would have made short work with us if we had been exposed to its fury.”
“Were there men on shore opposite the place you struck?” inquired Tom.
“Certainly. If there hadn’t been, who would have tied the line to the dog’s collar and told him to take it out to us?”