In one of its mad rushes the shark came within ten yards of the yacht, when Frank, making a lucky cast with the heavy sounding lead, landed it on the beast’s most vulnerable spot, the nose, and stunned him. Arthur got out an oar and paddled over to the yawl, handed the line over to Frank and got aboard. Frank made the line fast to the bitts forward, then cried exultingly: “Go ahead, old tow-horse, and tow away. Pleased to have you, I’m sure.” The shark’s gameness was broken, however, and after a few heroic struggles to get free, came within easy sight of Frank, who speedily put a bullet into him and ended the tragedy. They pulled the great fish alongside and measured him.
“A good twelve-footer, I bet,” Frank asserted, after measuring the big tiger of the sea with an oar. “And look at that jaw! Jonah could only have got past those teeth in sections.”
“Well, you did do something,” Kenneth remarked, as he glanced at the long, lithe creature floating alongside. “But I did not expect you to catch a towboat.”
“Suppose—say, I’ve got a bright idea”—Frank looked up from his inspection of Arthur’s catch—“suppose we drop a couple of baited lines forward, made fast to the bitts, catch a team of sharks and get towed to our next port, or why not the whole distance?”
“It might be all right to start, but how the mischief would we stop?” Arthur rubbed his muscles, strained in the efforts which he had already made in that direction.
“Oh, just anchor, hobble our team by the tails and go on about our business. It’s as simple as can be. They could soon be taught port and starboard.”
“Coming down to plain facts, I wish we had a breeze; even a foot-pump would help us.” Kenneth shielded his eyes from the glare and looked over the glittering blue waters for a wind ripple.
“Yes, like that fellow back in Michigan, who proposed to put a motor in his boat with an air blower, so that when the wind gave out he could blow himself along.”
Only enough breeze ruffled the smooth waters of the Gulf to allow them to creep back into harbor and wait for a new day.
The shark was cast loose, in spite of Arthur’s impractical protest that he wanted to keep it as a souvenir.