at
quieted the beggar a bit, and give him a chance to open Mr Jack Shark
up and see what he'd had for dinner lately."

"And did you find anything, Tom?" asked Roberts.

"Find anything, sir!" replied the man. "I should just think we did! I
mean, the lads did, sir; I warn't going to mess myself up with the
bloodthirsty varmint."

"Of course not," said Murray mischievously; "but what did they find?
Anything bad?--Physic bottle, for instance? Bother! What are you
doing, Roberts?" For his companion gave him a savage dig in the dark
with his elbow. "Oh, nothing!"

"Physic bottle, sir?" continued the sailor wonderingly. "Not as I know
on. More likely to ha' been an empty rum bottle. Wouldn't ha' been a
full un," added the man, chuckling. "But I tell you what they did find,
sir, and that was 'bout half-a-dozen o' them round brass wire rings as
the black women wears on their arms and legs."

"Ugh!" ejaculated Roberts, with a shudder. "How horrible!"

"Yes, sir; that seemed to tell tales like. Looked as if Jack had
ketched some poor black women swimming at the mouth o' one of the rivers
as runs down into the sea."

"Possibly," said Murray.

"Yes, sir; that's it. I did hear once of a shark being caught with a
jack knife inside him. It warn't no good, being all rusted up; but a
jack knife it was, all the same, with a loop at the end o' the haft
where some poor chap had got it hung round him by a lanyard--some poor
lad who had fell overboard, and the shark had been waiting for him. You
see, sir, such things as brass rings and jack knives wouldn't 'gest
like, as the doctor calls it."

"No; suppose not," said Murray, who added, after drawing back a little
out of the reach of Roberts's elbow, "and a bottle of physic would not
digest either."

"Not it, sir," replied the man, "onless it got broken, or the cork come
out."

"Er-r-r!" growled Roberts, in quite a menacing tone.

"He wouldn't like it, o' course, sir," said the man, speaking as if he
were playing into the midshipman's hand and chuckling the while.
"Doctors' stuff arn't pleasant to take for human sailors, and I don't
s'pose it would 'gree with sharks. I've been thinking, though, that I
should like to shy a bottle o' rum overboard, corked up, say, with a bit
o' the cook's duff. That would 'gest, and then he'd get the rum. Think
it would kill him, sir?"

"No, I don't," said Murray. "Ask Mr Roberts what he thinks. He's very
clever over such th