Tommy was not so much amused. Being able to swim she did not mind the sudden bath; but all the fish were gone; the morning's work was thrown away.
Fangati quickly righted the canoe, and having clambered into it, helped Tommy to regain her place. There was, of course, a quantity of water at the bottom of the little vessel.
"What was it?" exclaimed Tommy, shaking the water from her head. "Was it a shark?"
Fangati looked about her. In a moment she pointed to a strange object, something like the end of a saw, projecting from the bottom of the canoe. Tommy had never seen such a thing before. Stooping down, she pulled at it. It was loosely fixed, and came away in her hand. Instantly there was an inrush of water.
"No, no, silly Billy," cried Fangati, using an expression she had heard Tommy apply to the parrot.
She snatched the broken sword of the sword-fish from Tommy's hand, and tried to replace it. But though she succeeded in wedging it into the wood, it failed to stop the hole entirely. Without loss of time she seized her paddle and started for the shore, about a quarter of a mile distant. But the canoe had shipped a considerable quantity of water, and this was being continually increased by the inflow through the leak. It sunk lower and lower, and every minute answered less readily to Fangati's paddle. It soon became clear to the girls that the canoe must sink long before they reached the shore. They could easily gain the land by swimming, but the canoe could not be recovered if it sank.
Between them and the shore a rock stood just above the surface. It was only about a hundred yards away, and Fangati, exerting all her strength, drove the canoe towards it, and reached it in the nick of time. In another few seconds the canoe must have foundered.
There was not much room on the rock. Tommy scrambled on to it, while Fangati, slipping over into the sea, prepared to help Tommy drag the canoe up, so that they might tilt the water out of it, and try to stop the leak with a handkerchief, or a part of Tommy's skirt.
They had just begun to tilt the canoe when Tommy caught sight of a small dark object on the surface of the sea about thirty or forty yards away. It was the fin of a shark.
"Fangati, quick!" she called, holding out her hands to help the girl clamber on to the rock.