by biting off the head of a boarding-pike, which Ben thrust into its
mouth. With wild shouts the men sprang round it, rushing in, every now
and then, to give it a blow with an axe or capstan-bar, and leaping back
again to avoid its tail; for even though its head was nearly smashed in,
that continued striking out, and lashing the deck as furiously as at
first, till Higson came down on it with a well-aimed blow of his axe,
which instantly paralysed it, and it lay motionless.

"We'll make sure, lads, he don't come to life again," exclaimed Ben, as
he set to work to chop off the tail.

The head was treated in the same way; and a number of slices being cut
off the body, the remainder was thrown overboard. Murray, wondering
what the hubbub was about, had come on deck, and was an amused spectator
of the scene. The men no longer thought of the heat, and, in spite of
it, regaled themselves heartily on shark-steaks at dinner. The capture
of the shark, too, brought them good luck, they declared; for a
favourable breeze shortly afterwards sprang up, and held till the
northern coast of the South American continent was sighted. Before,
however, Carthagena, the port at which Murray had been directed to call,
first could be made, it again fell calm. He felt the delay very trying.
He had been eagerly hoping to get in by the evening, to ascertain if
anything had been heard of the _Sarah Jane_, and now another whole day
or more might pass before he could gain any information. The coast lay
in sight, its ranges of light-blue mountains looking like clouds, rising
above the horizon but proving that they were mountains by never altering
their shape or position. Higson whistled as energetically as usual, but
not a catspaw played over the surface of the mirror-like sea, and not an
inch nearer the shore did the brig move during the day. The night
passed by, and the hot sun rose once more out of the still slumbering
ocean. The day wore on, but no breeze came. The men, of course, were
not idle. Murray had from the first exercised them at their guns, and
especially in the use of the long one. He remembered the advice Admiral
Triton had given to Jack Rogers, and which Jack had repeated to him--

"Don't mind throwing a few rounds of shot away; you'll make the better
use of those you have remaining."

He, accordingly, had a floating target rigged and carried out to a
distance, and each day during a calm he exercised the men at it for s