CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
THE SPOILS OF THE SEA.
"A shark!" yelled out Mister Bob, evincing much greater fright than his sister Nell, although he was very fond of referring to her contemptuously as "being only a girl," when manly exploits happened to be the topic of conversation and she chanced to hazard an opinion; and, at the same instant, he jumped madly from the gunwale of the little cutter on to the top of her half-deck forwards, climbing from thence into the lee rigging, where he evidently thought he would be safer.

"A shark! Won't it bite ?" "Aye, by Jove, it will!" said the Captain ironically.

"I'd swarm up to the masthead, if I were you, so as to be out of harm's way.

You needn't mind your sister or any of us down here.

We can take care of ourselves!" This made Bob a bit ashamed, and he began to climb down again from the rigging, looking gingerly the while over the side, as if expecting every minute that the terrible monster of the deep which his imagination had pictured would spring up and seize him.
"I--I--was afraid," he faltered.