HE 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. "I--I--thought it best to get out of
the way."

"So it seems," said the old sailor grimly. "It's lucky, though, that
every one was not of the same mind; or where would we all be! Dick,
where's that hatchet I gave you this morning to put into the boat?"

"It's in the after locker, sir."

"Look smart, then," cried the Captain excitedly. "Bear a hand and get
it at once."

At this order, Dick, who, like Bob, had thought "discretion the better
part of valour," and got behind the windlass, in order to have some
substantial obstacle between himself and the trawl-net which the
Captain, with Mr Dugald Strong's aid, had partly dragged into the well
of the cutter, now crawled out from his retreat; and keeping over well
to leeward on the other side of the boom, proceeded to the locker in the
stern-sheets, from whence he took out a small axe and handed it to
Captain Dresser.

"Ha!" ejaculated the old sailor, as he gripped the weapon tightly and
belaboured with the back of it, using all the vigour of his still
nervous right arm, the bag, or "pocket" of the net, in which the body of
some big fish was seen to be entangled; although neither its form nor
appearance could be distinctly distinguished, the folds and meshes being
so tightly wrapped round it. "I'll soon settle him!"

"Hold hard!" shouted out Bob's father, at about the second blow with the
head of the axe over the gunwale. "You very nearly cut my arm o