This was enough for Master Shark, who, thinking he was going to lose the coveted morsel, at once sheered alongside of it, turning over on his back and opening his terrible-looking cavern of a mouth in the same way I had seen him do when he tried to catch poor Jackson. The recollection of that made me shudder all over!
The next moment the monster had bolted both bait and hook, as well as a couple of feet of the chain; but when he turned to sheer off again he was “brought up with a round turn,” as sailors say, by the rope tightening suddenly, the jerk almost making him turn a somersault in the water.
He was not altogether captured yet, however, and his struggles to get free were tremendous. Really, his jaws must have been pretty tough to have not given way under the furious flings and writhings he made to release himself; for the strong half-inch manilla rope that held him tethered was stretched like a fiddle-string, its strands all quivering with the strain upon it.
First to one side of the ship and then to the other the brute bounded in turns, making the sea boil around him like a whirlpool, until finally, after half an hour’s fight of it, he gave in and lay quiet, although not dead yet by any means.
As soon as the shark began to flounder about, I noticed that the pilot-fish went away, leaving him alone in his extremity; and on my mentioning this to Mr Marline he took the opportunity of pointing a moral for my especial benefit.
“It’s just the way in the world, Master Tom,” said he. “Foolish companions lead many a young fellow into a scrape; but as soon as they see him in the mess into which they were the means of inveigling him, they scuttle off, abandoning him to his fate and probably laughing at his troubles too.”
“Aye,” put in Captain Miles, wishing also to improve the occasion; “and if that shark had not been so madly impetuous in rushing at the hook he would never have been caught; in the same way as somebody told me of a certain young gentleman, who, not looking before he leaped, as the proverb says, and only thinking of the end he had in view, galloped down a hill and came to grief—getting a tumble which laid him up for weeks!”
“Oh, Captain Miles,” said I, “you don’t think I’m a shark, do you?”
“Well, not quite so bad as that, youngster,” he replied with one of his cheery laughs; “but, quite as impetuous sometimes, eh, Master Tom?”
I made no answer to this thrust, knowing there was some truth in it, my mother having frequently to call me over the coals for doing things on the spur of the moment, which, as she was aware, I always regretted afterwards.