Everybody was merry that night at supper but Nick. He tried not to show that he felt his sudden and unexpected drop from the top of the ladder to the lower rung; but it was hard work. His laughter was only a hollow mockery, so Josh declared; for the lean boy certainly did like to rub it into his fat chum when he had a chance.
Jimmy did not sleep well that night, though everything combined to make it a pleasant occasion for most of the others. Half a dozen times he would creep out of his blankets to see if the porpoise was still where he had tied it, and lying in shallow water. Evidently he feared lest some adventurous and hungry shark come nosing around, and attempt to run away with his prize, before its weight had been positively settled.
Once Jack heard him poking vigorously in the water with a pole, and muttering to himself.
“Want to take a lunch off me porpoise, is it ye’d be afther doin’, ye sly ould thafe of the worrld?” Jimmy was saying, as he punched vigorously.
“What is it?” asked Jack, looking over the side of the Tramp; as he happened to be up just then, to find out what his shipmate meant by getting out long before the first streak of daylight was due.
“Sure, it’s the bally ould crabs; they do be tryin’ to nibble at me fish; and it kapes me busy shooing the same away,” Jimmy answered back.
“But what’s the use bothering, since we don’t expect to eat the thing?” asked the other.
“Yes,” said Jimmy, quickly; “but they say ivery little bit helps; and wouldn’t I be the sad gossoon, now, if me fish weighed just the same as Nick’s, with some missing where thim sassy big crabs had had a breakfast. Sure, I want all I got, till we weigh the beauty. Afther that they can have it all, for what I care.”
“Oh! that’s where the shoe pinches, does it?” chuckled Jack. “Well, perhaps you’d better sit up, and keep watch, Jimmy. But please don’t shake the boat so much, and wake me again. It’s only three o’clock, with the old moon near the eastern horizon. Me to bed again for another snooze.”
When morning came Jimmy blandly informed Jack that he had actually spent the balance of the night with that pole in his hands, every now and then stirring the water in the vicinity of his prize.