The capable hands of her sixteen-year-old cousin gave the wheel a turn. The boat bore away to the right. The look on Pearl’s face became animated. She knew what the command meant. A great fish of one sort or another had broken water.
“Probably a horse mackerel,” she told herself. “Might be a swordfish, though. If it is—if she gets him! Oh, boy!”
The two girls had not been harpooning often, so this little adventure was a real treat. Even a horse mackerel would be worth something.
“But a swordfish,” Pearl told herself with a real thrill, “one of them may be worth a hundred dollars. And oh, boy! think of the thrill of the chase!”
The big girl in the crow’s nest was not dreaming. With blue eyes intent, with the color in her cheek heightened with excitement, she was studying an object that, now lifting on the crest of a wave, showed black against the skyline and now, with scarcely a perceptible motion, disappeared beneath the sea.
“Never saw a fish behave like that,” she told herself. “Acts like a log—almost—not quite. A log does not go under unless a wave hits it. This thing does. Shaped like a swordfish. But whoever heard of a swordfish acting that way?”
Once more she turned her head to broadcast an order in a tone that was all but a whisper.
“It is a swordfish,” she whispered back, ten seconds later. “I saw his sword. He’s a monster!”
A swordfish! Her mind was in a whirl. Suppose they got him! A hundred dollars. What did it not mean to those fisherfolk! A new suit for her father, a dress for herself, a new stove for the kitchen and perhaps a new punt. They needed a new one badly.
“A swordfish! It is! It is!” Her heart pounded furiously against her ribs as the boat came closer, ever closer to that languid black monster that now rising, now sinking, seemed half asleep.