Nick clambered aboard the motor boat in a hurry, as though really afraid that the fish in its anger might leap into the shallow dinky to bite him.
“Glory! just look at him jump and kick, would you?” shouted Nick, as the baffled captive sprang from the water, shaking its massive head furiously in an effort to dislodge the hook, which, however, was too securely placed by this time in the hard bone of its mouth to be shaken out. “He’s trying to locate me, that’s what! Let me have that gun of yours, Jack. Next time he jumps I’m going to pot him sure.”
And he did.
As a rule Nick was a poor shot. Whether luck entered into it, or his fear that the big fish was meaning to climb in after him, stirred him to unusual exertions, Jack never knew; but as he leaped into the air, not twenty feet away, there was a tremendous bang close beside Jack, and he saw the muskalunge drop back into the water as though fairly riddled with shot.
Poor Nick also tumbled over backwards, and lay there grunting and rubbing his head; for he had in his excitement pulled both triggers at the same time, so that a double discharge had followed.
“D-d-did I g-get him, Jack?” gasped the fat boy.
“Deader than a door nail or Julius Caesar!” laughed the other, as he began to draw in the line hand over hand; for there was no longer any positive resistance from the object at the other end.
“Look out! Be careful, Jack,” warned poor Nick, in fresh alarm. “You don’t understand how treacherous one of these muskies can be. ’Twouldn’t surprise me if he was playing ’possum right now. Throw him in the dinky when he comes along. Let him bite a chunk out of that with his old teeth if he wants to. I wouldn’t touch him for anything now.”
“Oh! you’ll enjoy a steak from the same old hooker tonight, never fear. But he’s dead as a herring, Buster. And what a monster! None of the rest of us are in it with you after this. I bet he weighs all of thirty-five pounds!”
By degrees, when he really saw that the big fish was dead, Nick recovered his courage; and by the time they drew up in the cove he was swelling with importance over the wonderful degree of success that had attended his maiden effort at capturing a muskalunge.