The thrasher, which has a back as elastic as an india-rubber ball, would jump clean out of the water and give the whale a whack in the ribs that must have taken all the elasticity out of him; and then, on the poor leviathan of the deep fluking his tail to dive so as to escape from his aerial antagonist, his chum the swordfish would tickle up the whale from below by sending a yard or two of his long saw-like snout into his tenderest part.
Presently, as we luffed up to see the end of the fun, the sea in the vicinity of the fray became tinged with blood, the colour of carmine, showing that somebody at all events was having a bad time of it.
“By the powers, it bates Bannagher,” cried Mick, who was watching the fight alongside of me on the upper deck, springing up on to the hammock nettings in his excitement to see the finish, unthinking of the breach of discipline he was committing. “Go it, ye cripples. Sure, Tom, the little wun’ll win—what d’ye call him?”
“He’s a thrasher,” I replied, jumping up, too, on the top of the nettings. “A sort of shark, I think. Father has one stuffed at home, stowed away somewhere, that looks like that chap. If so, he’s a fox-shark.”
“A fox-shark, begorrah!” repeated Mick, with a grin. “Faith, Tom, he’s goin’ fur thet ould whale theer ez if he wor not ownly a fox, sure, but a pack of hounds as will, alannah!”
“Hi, there, you boys,” roared out a voice at this juncture, which we had little difficulty in recognising as belonging to Lieutenant Robinson, who was again officer of the watch this afternoon, his turn of duty having once more come round. “Get off that netting at once and go below, both of you. Master-at-arms, take those boys’ names down and put them in the report, and bring them up on the deck after ‘divisions’ to-morrow!”
The ‘Jaunty,’ who was standing below the break of the poop, looked up at the scowling lieutenant, saluting him.
“Very good, sir,” said he, with another touch of his hat, in recognition of the authority of the speaker. “I will see to it, sir.”
But, a ‘Deus ex machina,’ or ‘God from the bathing-machine,’ as our old captain of the Saint Vincent would have said in his Latin lingo, just then intervened on our behalf.
Mick Donovan and I were sneaking down the main hatch, like a pair of whipped dogs with their tails between their legs—though I must say we were more chagrined at losing the best part of the fight going on in the water, which was rapidly approaching a climax, than dismayed at having incurred the displeasure of the lieutenant—when, if you please, we heard somebody shout out something behind us, and the master-at-arms, who had followed in our wake, called out to us to stop.