Ethel and Rose sat reading under the awning; the doctor was fishing over the taffrail; the mates were forward superintending the men, who were busy cleaning the forecastle.
Captain Phillips sat somewhat moodily on a spare topsail-yard, that was slung alongside, smoking, with his short fat legs dangling over the water, and his eyes fixed on the horizon, as if he was waiting to see the coming breeze.
Tempted by the heat, Manfredi was about to strip for a bathe about the ship's bows, when the Yankee, Bill Badger, who was busy painting the grating of the head-boards, sung out:
"Take care, mate! for here comes a fellow that gobble up the prophet Joaney. Once in his ballast port, I calculate you'll never be a capting, Mr. Manfreddy. Blowd if I don't get a harpoon, and have a shy at the beggar!"
"Look, Miss Rose," cried Captain Phillips, from his perch on the spare topsail-yard, "there goes a sea-lawyer."
Rose looked at her papa and laughed, while the ship's cook threw over a piece of rancid pork, with a sharp skewer in it, for mischief, as there is a natural antipathy between Jack Tar and Jack Shark.
The shark—a white one—turned on his back, and the piece of pork that floated steadily on the oily sea vanished into his capacious maw, the opening and shutting of which made the girls shudder, and old Nurse Folgate, who was knitting beside them, utter a "Lor' a mussy me!" with great earnestness.
Hawkshaw hoped the heat might tempt either of the Barradas to take a bathe alongside, but they were much too cautious to do so.
"How horrible!" said Ethel, as the monster sailed away, with his black triangular fin erect.
"A fellow like that would dart at a man in the sea, and snap him up as a snipe would a fly," said Dr. Heriot. "I have heard, Miss Basset, of the master of a Guinea ship, among whose cargo of slaves there prevailed a strange rage for drowning in the belief that, after death, they would be restored to their native country, their tribes and wigwams; to cure them of this, or to convince them that they could not reanimate their dead bodies, he ordered one, a gigantic negro, who had died at a ring-bolt, to be towed overboard by the heels at the end of a line. A shark rose. In an instant twenty men tailed on the rope to haul the body in, yet that instant did not suffice. The shark devoured every morsel save the feet and ankles, which were tied by the end of the rope."