“I’m going to try to get one of the sharks to come close enough to give him a taste of this handspike,” said the stalwart young fellow, drawing himself up to his full height, and looking round with a determined expression on his face that I had never seen there before. “If I can only get them all to come to the inside of the ship, I shall do for one or two, I know.”
“Golly, Massa Jackson, me help you wid um knife,” exclaimed Jake, entering with much animation in the other’s project. “S’pose we fiss for um wid sumfin’, so as make um swim roun’ t’oder side ob ship, hey?”
“That’s a good idea,” said Captain Miles, and he offered Jake his hat to use as a bait, but the darkey shook his head at this.
“No, tankee, Mass’ Cap’en, I’se got sumfin’ better nor dat,” he exclaimed, pulling off the guernsey with which he had sheltered me the first night we were exposed on the wreck. “Dis do ebber so much betterer. Shark smell um, an’ tink he hab dis niggah, yah, yah!”
As he laughed, he tied one end of a bit of the signal halliards, which he had used to lash himself to the rigging, to the guernsey, lowering it down to a short distance above the surface of the water, where he kept it dangling.
One of the sharks rose towards it, another coming up soon after in its train; and then Jake kept continually shifting the rope round that portion of the taffrail of the poop which was above the sea, the sharks following in chase of the deceptive bait until he had lured them round to the inside part of the ship to join the one who was still on sentry there.
This was just what Jackson wanted; so he now proceeded to climb out along the mizzen rigging until he reached the point where the sea lapped it, when he arranged his running noose underneath, tying the loose end of the rope to the shrouds in a double hitch.
Jake then manoeuvred the baited line nearer to where the second mate had stationed himself, climbing out into the mizzen rigging too; when, as the leading shark turned over on its back and bit at the guernsey, Jackson slipped the running knot over its tail, pulling the noose in so that it held tightly. Then, seizing the handspike, he began belabouring the monster in a way that must pretty well have astonished its weak nerves, Jake the while stabbing it in the tail-end of the body with his long-bladed knife.
There was a terrific scuffle in which the water was tossed high in the air; but, after a minute or two, the shark broke the rope and managed to get away, although it was so seriously injured that it still remained on its back, and a quantity of blood poured out from the wounds it had received.
This made the crippled animal’s comrades set upon it, tearing it to pieces between them; and, while they were gorging themselves with the dissevered carcass, Jake dived into the sea under the fierce creatures, stabbing them wherever he could with such effect that his onslaught frightened the whole lot away—not a shark being visible in the vicinity within a few minutes after the commencement of the fray!