"This big enough?" he asked.
"I reckon it'll do." Taking the meat, Mr. Lakewood stuck the hook, which was fully a foot in length, through the middle of it.
"Now, Jack, suppose you go and ask whoever's at the wheel to slow down to about half speed. We're going so fast that I'm afraid the bait'll just skip along the surface and, you know, a shark has to turn over pretty well onto his back when he bites."
Jack found Pat on the wheel, and, on being told what was up, the Irishman at once rang for half speed, and almost immediately the boat again began to slow down. Jack hurried back to find his uncle slowly paying out the line.
"Had a bite?" he chuckled.
"Not yet," Bob replied.
There was a sinker on the line, but in spite of it the hunk of meat at first skipped over the surface of the water but, as the speed of the boat lessened, it soon disappeared.
"How much line have we got?" Bob asked.
"Ole said there was about a hundred feet," his uncle told him.
"Then we must have out about fifty feet now," Jack said.