that will bring him around?" asked Bill.

"It'll help, anyway," replied Lester. "But to make it surer, we'll cut
up the pork into small pieces and scatter it on the water. He'll smell
it as sure as guns, and I'll wager you that before ten minutes are over
you'll see the old rascal swimming toward us."

The boys got their clasp knives out at once and slashed the pork into
bits, taking care however not to touch the big piece.

"He's coming," cried Teddy, after perhaps five minutes had passed. "I
saw his fin just then, not fifty feet away."

The pieces of pork were now bobbing up and down on the water at the
stern of the _Ariel_, which had almost stopped moving.

There was a twitch and one of the pieces disappeared. For an instant the
boys saw a long black body, the wet skin glistening in the rays of the
sun like so much velvet.

"By jinks!" whispered Bill in awe. "What an old sockdolager!"

"He's one of the biggest I've ever seen," returned Lester. "Fellows of
his size don't get up this way very often."

"I'd hate to fall overboard just now," said Teddy.

"You'd make just about one mouthful for him," was Fred's comforting
rejoinder.

Lester was making feverish haste in the task of preparing the hook. He
sank it deep into the yielding pork, so that the point was at least six
inches from any surface.

"Suppose he nibbles it off," suggested Bill.

"Sharks don't eat that way," grinned Lester. "They're gluttons, and if
they bite at all they take everything down--hook, line and sinker."

"I'm afraid we couldn't hold him if we did hook him," said Teddy. "He'd
yank us overboard in a minute."

"I'll take care of that," replied Lester, at the same time taking
several turns around the mast with the slack of the rope. "He'll have to
pull the mast out of the _Ariel_ to get away."

By this time all the floating bits of pork had been snapped up by this
cormorant of the sea.

"He seems to like our lunch counter," laughed Teddy.

"We've made him a steady customer, I guess," returned Bill.

"Well, if he likes the samples, we'll show him some of the real goods,"
chimed in Lester, as he prepared to throw the baited hook overboard.

Just then the shark appeared, swimming lazily under the counter of the
boat. He was just under the surface, and his glassy, wicked eyes looked
full in the faces of the boys as they crowded to the side.

"My, he's a terror!" exclaimed Teddy, as the pirate of the seas slowly
moved past. "Is h