“I’d get my assistant to pump a ton of chloroform in him first,” declared Fred. “And even then I’d want to get into a suit of armor before I operated on him.”
“No wonder the sailors hate the brutes,” mused Teddy, as he thought of the poor fellows who had been devoured by the monsters.
“No one of them knows but that he may be the next,” added Bill.
“The sailors get even whenever they have the chance,” chimed in Lester. “The minute they see any of the beasts near the ship, they trail a hook over the stern in the hope of catching him. Sailors are superstitious, and they believe that as long as a shark is in sight some one on board is doomed to die. So they try to kill the hoodoo, by putting the shark out of business.”
“It’s a great thing to feel a good deck beneath your feet, when a shark heaves in sight,” remarked Bill. “Even in a boat no bigger than the Ariel, we’re reasonably safe. But think of what it must be like to be on an open raft on the ocean with a 136 crowd of these hungry pirates swimming all around you.”
“And flinging themselves half way across the raft sometimes, trying to upset it,” added Teddy.
“It must be something fearful,” agreed Lester. “But there are some people who are not afraid to meet the shark on its own ground–if one can call water ground.”
“It must take a lot of nerve,” declared Teddy. “I don’t want to take their job away from them.”
“Of course it takes a lot of nerve,” was the answer. “It takes a heap of skill too. No one could do it, if he couldn’t swim just about as well as the shark himself.
“Dad has told me of what he has seen with his own eyes. A native of some of the South Sea Islands, when he learns from a fisherman that a shark is cruising around, will take his knife between his teeth, slip into the water and swim out to meet him.