Motor Boat Boys Among the Florida Keys Part 24

"It's very pat," remarked Jack, when the stout youth rejoined the group about the fire, "that if any of us want to know about sharks, their habits, and how best to get the pirates of the sea ash.o.r.e, we've got to go to Nick here."

"Yes," spoke up George, "he ought to be a walking dictionary of terms; because he's always asking questions of every cracker and sponger we meet. I honestly believe, boys, he keeps a shark book, and that he's got an idea of writing the family tree up some day."

"Oh! come off," grinned Nick; "after I've hauled a dandy weighing about half a ton on sh.o.r.e, and showed you what I can do, I guess the whole business can go hang, for all of me. What use are they, anyhow? You can't eat 'em."

"That's the way Nick always judges things," declared George. "If they don't happen to be good for food, he's got mighty little use for the same."

"I ain't denying it, am I?" queried the other, good-naturedly. "What are we here for, anyway, but to eat our way through this dreary old world?

Of course, don't go and think I believe eating's the _only_ thing worth living for; but it cuts a big figure with me. Guess I was born half starved, and I've been tryin' all I knew how ever since to make it up."

"And by the powers, ye look that happy now, I be afther thinkin' ye must expect to pull in the champion fish this same night," Jimmy commented.

"Well, I've got a hunch that something is about due," Nick replied, confidently. "There's a fishy smell about this place, seems to me; and I just reckon that in times past many a dandy old shark has been yanked up on this same beach. That tideway looked good to me, too; and by now, as Jack said, I ought to know something about the hungry crew. Just wait and see what happens, that's all."

Jimmy became a little uneasy. Perhaps it was in the air that his day to fall had come around in due time. He cast frequent glances over toward the snubbing post as the evening drew on, with twilight succeeding the setting of the sun.

Nick had heard Jack telling how he went pickerel fis.h.i.+ng on the ice one winter, and the methods of telling when a fish took the hook appealed to him. Consequently he employed the same sort of tactics when in pursuit of n.o.bler game.

"For, you see, they call a pickerel or a pike a fresh-water shark," he had explained, when first testing the plan; "and what is good for one, ought to work with the other."

At the top of the snubbing post he had fastened an iron ring. The rope pa.s.sed through this, being secured by a staple that could be easily dislodged, as it was intended for only temporary use.

Back of the post the line was coiled up several times, and a white rag fastened to it at a certain point. When a shark carried off the baited hook, this slack would quickly pa.s.s through the ring at the top of the stout post, so that the flag must mount upward, and signal to the alert fisherman that he had made a strike; when he could hasten to attend to his captive.

They were eating supper, as the night closed in. Nick had seated himself in a comfortable position, where he might occasionally raise his eyes, and by a turn of the head look off in the direction where his trap was laid.

During the earlier part of the meal he had paid strict attention to business, and glanced that way about once a minute faithfully. But as the spirit of feasting took a firmer clutch upon his soul, the fat boy began to forget.

Not so Jimmy. He had taken up his quarters so that he might observe the goings on at the snubbing post without even turning his head. And as he munched away at what he had on his tin platter, the Irish lad kept a close watch for the flaunting of the tell-tale signal.

Jack saw this, and he knew that all he had to do in order to keep fully posted as to the way things were working, was to watch Jimmy, whose freckled face would serve as a thermometer.

And after a while, when it was almost pitch-dark around the camp on the edge of the water, he discovered that Jimmy was staring at the snubbing post as though fascinated. His lips were working, too, though apparently he was having a hard time trying to speak, and tell his rival that the trap was working.

But Jimmy was clean-cut and generous, even to one with whom he had entered into a contest for supremacy; and presently he burst forth.

"Would ye be afther getting a move on, Nick?" he exclaimed. "There's the flag a flutterin' on the top of the post like a signal man wigwaggin' in the Boy Scouts troop! And by the powers, it's gone now, pulled clane out of the socket. Be off with ye; for, by the same token, ye've cotched the granddaddy of all the sharrks, I do belave!"

CHAPTER XXI.

VICTORY COMES TO NICK.

"Whoop! here I go, fellers!" shouted Nick, as, scrambling awkwardly to his feet, he hurried along the beach toward the spot where he had left his shark line.

Of course the rest hastened to follow after him. They found the fat boy bending down and feeling of the taut rope.

"Gee whittaker! but I've caught the biggest ever, I do believe!" Nick was crying. "Just feel that line, would you? Acts like it had hold of a house, with the tide running out. Say, it'll take me all night to get that monster ash.o.r.e; but I'll do it; you hear me warble, Jimmy, I'll do it!"

"Good for you, Nick!" laughed Jack.

"We'll back you up to win out, if you only keep everlastingly at it,"

remarked Herb.

"And don't be afther forgettin' the rules of the game, all of ye,"

warned Jimmy. "n.o.body must put a finger on the loine to hilp Nick. I want to see him have fair play, so I do. And, by the same token, if he bates me by three hundred pounds, I'll be the firrst gossoon to congratulate him on his success. You know that, boys."

"Sure we do, Jimmy," spoke up George.

"It wouldn't be like you not to do the same," declared Josh.

"You know what you've just got to do, Nick," remarked Jack.

"Guess I do," chuckled the owner of the outfit, as he looked eagerly out over the darkening water to that point toward which the taut line seemed to extend; but if he entertained a faint hope that the prisoner would leap into view while trying to get rid of the steel barb, he mistook the nature of the shark, which bores deep, and tries to do by main strength what a tarpon, a trout, a salmon or a black ba.s.s attempts by that upward fling, and shake of the head.

"He's going it pretty furious right now," Josh observed.

"Yes, and the harder he pulls the better," Nick said. "That'll help to tire the old chap out, and make it easier for poor me to get him ash.o.r.e, foot by foot, by making use of my snubbing post here. But let's go back and finish our supper, boys. If the hook holds, and the rope is as good as I think, he'll be here tugging away an hour from now, just as much as he is now."

"That's where your head's level, Nick," commented Jack.

And so the whole party wended their way back to where the camp-fire blazed on the sh.o.r.e. Here the pleasant task of finis.h.i.+ng their meal was once more resumed. Some of them thought Nick was really devouring even more than usual, though that might be hard to believe.

"He wants to get his strength up to top-notch!" laughed Herb.

"Well," observed Nick, calmly, as he reached deliberately over, and took the last helping of Boston baked beans from the tin kettle in which they had been heated for the meal; "I hate to see things go to waste; and there are some fellers around who don't seem to know what's good."

"I've noticed," Josh remarked, drily, "that you don't mind how much goes to _your_ waist, all right."

Nick only groaned at the pun, and went on cleaning out his platter, as though he believed in always laying in a healthy supply of food, since n.o.body could tell when another chance might come around.

Afterwards they lay about the camp and told stories, joked and even sang school songs. Nick seemed in no great hurry to take up the task that awaited him. He knew from former experiences just what it meant. But that the subject was on his mind all the while was made manifest from what he said.

"Jack, I want to ask you a question!" he began.

"Well, fire away, then," suggested the other, with a nod of invitation.

"If, now, this fellow at the end of my line turns out to be so heavy that I just can't budge him, when I get the chump at the edge of the water, would it be breaking the rules if I borrowed that block and tackle to help yank him out, so you can all see him, and estimate his weight?"

"How about that, fellows?" asked Jack, looking around with a wink toward the other chums.

"Why, of course he can make use of any means, so long as no other person lends a hand to a.s.sist him," George gave as his opinion.

"That's what!" Josh added.

"If he goes and gets the falls and fixes the whole blooming business himself, of course he's got the right to do it," declared Herb.