ather
bow, there was a little iceberg which had such a queerness about it
that the captain and three men went in a boat to look at it. The ice
was mighty clear ice, and you could see almost through it, and right
inside of it, not more than three feet above the waterline, and about
two feet, or maybe twenty inches, inside the ice, was a whopping big
shark, about fourteen feet long,--a regular man-eater,--frozen in there
hard and fast. `Bless my soul,' said the captain, `this is a wonderful
curiosity, and I'm going to git him out.' Just then one of the men
said he saw that shark wink, but the captain wouldn't believe him, for
he said that shark was frozen stiff and hard and couldn't wink. You
see, the captain had his own idees about things, and he knew that
whales was warm-blooded and would freeze if they was shut up in ice,
but he forgot that sharks was not whales and that they're cold-blooded
just like toads. And there is toads that has been shut up in rocks for
thousands of years, and they stayed alive, no matter how cold the place
was, because they was cold-blooded, and when the rocks was split, out
hopped the frog. But, as I said before, the captain forgot sharks was
cold-blooded, and he determined to git that one out.

"Now you both know, being housekeepers, that if you take a needle and
drive it into a hunk of ice you can split it. The captain had a
sail-needle with him, and so he drove it into the iceberg right
alongside of the shark and split it. Now the minute he did it he knew
that the man was right when he said he saw the shark wink, for it
flopped out of that iceberg quicker nor a flash of lightning."

"What a happy fish he must have been!" ejaculated Dorcas, forgetful of
precedent, so great was her emotion.

"Yes," said Captain Jenkinson, "it was a happy fish enough, but it
wasn't a happy captain. You see, that shark hadn't had anything to
eat, perhaps for a thousand years, until the captain came along with
his sail-needle."

"Surely you sailormen do see strange things," now said the widow, "and
the strangest thing about them is that they are true."

"Yes, indeed," said Dorcas, "that is the most wonderful thing."

"You wouldn't suppose," said the Widow Ducket, glancing from one bench
of mariners to the other, "that I have a sea-story to tell, but I have,
and if you like I will tell it to you."

Captain Bird looked up a little surprised.

"We would like to hear it--indeed, we would, madam,"