“Guess I do,” chuckled the owner of the outfit, as he looked eagerly out over the darkening water to that point toward which the taut line seemed to extend; but if he entertained a faint hope that the prisoner would leap into view while trying to get rid of the steel barb, he mistook the nature of the shark, which bores deep, and tries to do by main strength what a tarpon, a trout, a salmon or a black bass attempts by that upward fling, and shake of the head.
“He’s going it pretty furious right now,” Josh observed.
“Yes, and the harder he pulls the better,” Nick said. “That’ll help to tire the old chap out, and make it easier for poor me to get him ashore, foot by foot, by making use of my snubbing post here. But let’s go back and finish our supper, boys. If the hook holds, and the rope is as good as I think, he’ll be here tugging away an hour from now, just as much as he is now.”
“That’s where your head’s level, Nick,” commented Jack.
And so the whole party wended their way back to where the camp-fire blazed on the shore. Here the pleasant task of finishing their meal was once more resumed. Some of them thought Nick was really devouring even more than usual, though that might be hard to believe.
“He wants to get his strength up to top-notch!” laughed Herb.
“Well,” observed Nick, calmly, as he reached deliberately over, and took the last helping of Boston baked beans from the tin kettle in which they had been heated for the meal; “I hate to see things go to waste; and there are some fellers around who don’t seem to know what’s good.”
“I’ve noticed,” Josh remarked, drily, “that you don’t mind how much goes to your waist, all right.”
Nick only groaned at the pun, and went on cleaning out his platter, as though he believed in always laying in a healthy supply of food, since nobody could tell when another chance might come around.