The tarpon went speeding away toward the gulf, leaping madly out of the water now and then, as though still trying to shake that jewelry from its jaw, or else making sport of disconsolate Jimmy, who sat there casting yearning looks after his escaped prize.
He always maintained that it was a two hundred-and-thirty-five-pound fish, though just why he hit upon that odd figure Nick alone could guess. The jewfish he remembered had been calculated to tip the scales at two hundred and thirty pounds. And it is always the largest fish that gets away.
Well, after that disappointment Jimmy might have been pardoned had he given up for the day; but that was not his way. He kept at it all the blessed afternoon. Several bites rewarded his diligence, but he did not succeed in getting fast to another of the silver kings.
And, greatly to his disappointment, the evening came on with the grinning Nick still holding high record in the contest.
Jack had been quite as successful as he had ventured to hope. George and Herb both declared that he had patched the fracture in the ribs and planks of the Comfort in a truly shipshape manner; and that there could be no question about the repair holding, up to the time they expected reaching Tampa.
“Then we go on tomorrow, do we?” asked Nick, anxious to get Jimmy away from the tarpon temptation; for he feared the lucky Irish lad might sooner or later get hold of some monster, which would put his prize out of the running.
Jack said there was nothing to hinder; and with all of them, save perhaps Jimmy, feeling quite happy and contented, the night came on.
In the morning they were off again, and that day they saw the last of that weird region charted as the Ten Thousand Islands. None of them were sorry; indeed, the very monotony of those mangrove covered mud flats had begun to pall upon every member of the expedition.
When they began to see plumed palmetto trees along the shore, the sight brought forth cheers from several of the more joyous among the voyagers.
And it certainly looked more like life to note the buzzards floating overhead again, with pelicans skimming the waves out on the gulf, in search of their fish dinner. There were also many water turkeys, with their snake-like necks, and black cormorants swimming in the lagoons behind the keys.