It was a shark! But the monster, a coward like all his tribe, deterred by the plashing of the water made by Asgeelo, circled round him and hesitated to seize his prey. The moment was frightful. Yet Asgeelo appeared not in the least alarmed. He swam slowly, occasionally turning his head and watching the monster, seeming by his easy dexterity to be almost as much in his native element as his pursuer, keeping his eyes fixed on him and holding his knife in a firm clasp. The knife was a long, keen blade, which Asgeelo had carried with him for years.
Louis and Frank could do nothing. A pistol ball could not reach this monster, who kept himself under the water, where a ball would be spent before striking him, if indeed any aim could direct a bullet toward that swift darting figure. They had nothing to do but to look on in an agony of horror.
Asgeelo, compelled to watch, to guard, to splash the water, and to turn frequently, made but a slow passage over those twenty yards which separated him from the boat. At last it seemed as if he chose to stay there. It seemed to those who watched him with such awful horror that he might have escaped had he chosen, but that he had some idea of voluntarily encountering the monster. This became evident at last, as the shark passed before him when they saw Asgeelo’s face turned toward it; a face full of fierce hate and vengeance; a face such as one turns toward some mortal enemy.
He made a quick, fierce stroke with his long knife. The shark gave a leap upward. The water was tinged with blood. The next moment Asgeelo went down.
“What now?” was the thought of the brothers. Had he been dragged down? Impossible! And yet it seemed equally impossible that he could have gone down of his own accord.
In a moment their suspense was ended. A white flash appeared near the surface. The next instant a dark, sinewy arm emerged from beneath, armed with a long, keen knife, which seemed to tear down with one tremendous stroke that white, shining surface.
It was Asgeelo’s head that emerged in a sea of blood and foam. Triumph was in his dark face, as with one hand he waved his knife exultantly.
A few moments afterward the form of a gigantic shark floated upward to the surface, dyeing the sea with the blood which had issued from the stroke dealt by Asgeelo. Not yet, however, was the vindictive fury of the Hindu satiated. He swam up to it. He dashed his knife over and over the white belly till it became a hideous mass of gaping entrails. Then he came into the boat.
He sat down, a hideous figure. Blood covered his tawny face, and the fury of his rage had not left the features.
The strength which this man had shown was tremendous, yet his quickness and agility even in the water had been commensurate with his strength. Brandon had once seen proofs of his courage in the dead bodies of the Malay pirates which lay around him in the cabin of that ill-fated Chinese ship: but all that he had done then was not to be compared to this.