Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/156

 with us, because I felt sure Slagg would not go without him, and although we might easily have done without Stumps, we could not have got on so well without Slagg."

"I 'm not so sure of that, my boy. Your opinion of him is too high, though I admit him to be a first-rate youth. Indeed, if it were not so, he should not be here.—Was that a shark's fin alongside?"

"Yes, I think so. Cook has been throwing scraps overboard, I suppose.—See, there goes an empty meat-tin."

As he spoke the article named rose into the air, and fell with a splash in the water. At the same time Jim Slagg was seen to clamber on the bulwarks and look over.

"Come here—look alive. Stumps!" he shouted.

Stumps, whose proper name, it is but fair to state, was John Shanks, clambered clumsily to his friend's side just in time to see a shark open its horrid jaws and swallow the meat-tin.

"Well now, I never!" exclaimed Slagg. "He didn't even smell it to see if it was to his taste."

"P'r'aps he 's swallowed so many before," suggested Stumps, "that he takes for granted it 's all right."

"Well it 's on'y flavour; and he has caught a Tartar this time," returned the other, "unless, maybe, tin acts like pie-crust does on human vitals."