Immediately Hans appeared on the bowsprit, armed with his Orkney harpoon, a long spear pointed with barbed iron. Rapidly he bent the line to the foreganger of his weapon, and grasping it, with a handful of slack in his right hand, he slid under the bowsprit, and along the martingale stays which are stretched taut to the end of the jib-boom. Clasping the vertical spar of the martingale with his left arm, he took a steady aim at the dolphin, and launched his harpoon with all his strength.
The stroke was followed by a shout from the crew, who crowded into the bows and forerigging, for poor Hans had overstruck himself, and after swinging violently round the martingale, fell into the sea, missing the dolphin, which instantly disappeared.
"My dream—oh, my dream!" cried old Hans in terror, as he rose floundering and sputtering to the surface.
Then came the appalling cry of "A shark! a shark!" and in the very place where the dolphin sank, the short crooked fin of this great monster of the deep was seen making straight towards Hans, who, though an expert swimmer, a hard-a-weather salt, accustomed to all the hardships and terrors of Ultima Thule and his native Orcades, was struggling wildly for life, having got entangled in the slack line of his harpoon.
"Captain Hartly—man overboard! a rope—a rope!"
"Cut away the life-buoy!"
"Lower away the stern-boat!"
Such were the cries on every hand, while the current soon swept Peterkin past the brig, till he was nearly fifty yards astern.
Old Hans uttered a cry of despair, echoed by a groan from all, and sank!
Regardless of the shark, which was then double the distance of Hans from us, Hartly, who had rushed on deck at the first alarm, with the rapidity of thought, threw off his coat, knotted a line round his waist, lowered himself into the mainchains, and joining the palms of his hands together in the cut-water fashion of a diver, urging the while his agile body by a sharp push from the chain-plate, sprang into the sea, and vanished amid the ripples. Then in half minute or less he reappeared with Hans, whose grey locks he grasped firmly, as he cast upward a glance of mingled hope and terror—hope of aid from his crew, and terror of the monster, which was shooting towards them; for though the ring of Mother Jensdochter was to save him from drowning, the good dame omitted all mention of sea-lawyers.