“If he’s a big fellow, we’ll not,” was the answer, “unless we can get him near enough to stun him with a hatchet. Even on board a big ship the men often have to attach the rope to a windlass to draw the big fellows in while they’re still full of fight. Even if he were stunned, I don’t think that all of us pulling together could lift his dead weight on board the Ariel.”
“Then what would we do with him?” asked Teddy.
“We’d have to tow him astern until we could run in somewhere and pull him ashore,” answered Lester. “That’s what the fishermen round here usually do when they hook one. Once get him on the beach, and the rest is easy.”
“Perhaps we’ll have a shark steak for supper,” said Teddy.
“Perhaps, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Lester, with a grimace. “I’ve tasted it and I must admit that it’s pretty rank. I wouldn’t care to have it as a steady diet, unless I were starving and 115 couldn’t get anything else. The Chinese make soup of its fins though, and they say that it’s dandy.”
“You say you’d try to stun him with a hatchet,” said Bill, the skeptic. “But suppose you couldn’t get him near enough for that?”
“Then we’d try something else,” replied Lester. “Here, Teddy, take the tiller for a minute.”
Teddy did as requested, and Lester, reaching down into the cabin, drew out and displayed to the astonished eyes of the boys a long harpoon.