The Lily shot into the wind, just clearing the buoy by a hair’s-breadth. I sprang to the rigging, stooped down, and seized Bob’s extended hand with mine as he came alongside, and then, exerting all the strength I could command, I fairly jerked him out of the water upon deck, just as the shark had apparently made up his mind to be no longer denied.
With such impetuosity did he make his rush, that his snout rose a good two feet fairly above our gunwale; and had not the impetus with which I jerked Bob out of the water been sufficient to fetch him clear inboard, the shark would have had him after all. As it was, we got a glance into his open jaws, and at his six rows of teeth, the remembrance of which makes me shudder to this day.
As the shark disappeared with a savage whisk of the tail, poor Bob turned to me; his lips quivered convulsively for a moment in an effort to speak, and then he fell to the deck in a dead faint.
Two or three buckets of water dashed in his face, and a glass of neat brandy, however, soon restored him, and it was almost pitiful to listen to the poor fellow’s heartfelt and reiterated expressions of gratitude for his rescue.
“Ever since about half an hour after sunrise was that incarnate devil alongside of me,” exclaimed he; “and hadn’t it been for my seeing the cutter’s sails, and knowin’ as you was on the look-out for me, I must have give in. Human natur’ couldn’t hold out ag’in’ that sort of thing for long. And now, I feel that weak and done up, that a child might pitch me overboard ag’in, if he was so minded, I do believe.”
The life-buoy came aboard again with Bob; so I unshipped the signal-staff and took it to pieces, made it up in a bundle once more, stopped it to the buoy, and slung the buoy itself in its old position on the boom.
The cutter was still hove-to, and I allowed her to remain so, whilst I went forward to see to the breakfast, Bob meanwhile changing his wet clothes for dry ones, and hanging the former in the rigging to dry.
I was still busy over the cookery, when Bob came into the forecastle, and observed:
“I say, Harry, there’s that spiteful devil still alongside, and with a most onchristian longing to make a breakfast off of your old shipmate, I’ll go bail! Couldn’t we contrive somehow to put a stopper on his tormentin’ purpensities?”
“Ay, ay, Bob, old man!” replied I; “I think we may manage to do that without much difficulty. You get one of the air-guns out of the beckets, whilst I look after this coffee—it’s just on the boil—and we’ll try the virtues of cold lead upon his constitution, and the powers of the gun at the same time.”