The Captain heaved a heavy sigh for the lost joys of youth and was silent for a moment.  Then his eyes twinkled and he began another story.  “One day as we was skirtin’ the shores of Martha’s Vineyard,” he said, “we were followed by a shark.  Now, there ’s nothing a sailor hates worse than a shark; and for good reasons.  They ’re the pirates of the deep; that ’s what they are.  They ’ll follow a vessel for days, snapping up whatever the cook throws out, and hoping somebody ’ll fall overboard to give ’em a full meal.  Well, sir, there was a sailor aboard on that voyage that had a special grudge against sharks.  He ’d been all but et up by one once, and he allowed this was his chance to get even; so he let out a hook baited with a whole pound of salt pork, and the shark gobbled it down instanter, hook and all.  They hauled him up the ship’s side, and then that sailor let himself down over the rails by a rope, and cut a hole in the shark’s gullet, or whatever they call the pouch the critter carries his supplies in, and took out the pork.  Then he dropped him back in the water and threw the pork in after him.  Well, sir, believe it or not, that shark sighted the pork bobbing round in the water; so he swallowed it again.  Of course it dropped right out through the hole in his gullet, and, by jolly! as long as we could see him that shark was continuing to swallow that piece of pork over and over again.  I don’t know as I ever see any animal get more pleasure out of his rations than that shark got out of that pound of pork.  I believe in bein’ kind to dumb critters,” he finished, “and I reckon the shark is about the dumbdest there is.  Anyhow that one surely did die happy.”  Here the Captain solemnly winked his eye.

“What became of the sailor?” asked Dan.

“That sailor was me,” admitted the Captain.  “That ’s what became of him, and served him right, too.”

They slept that night on the deck of the sloop, and before light the next morning Dan was awakened by the groaning of the chain as the anchor was hauled up, and the flapping of the sails as Timothy hoisted them to catch a stiff breeze which was blowing from the northeast.  The second day passed like the first.  The weather was fine, the winds favorable, and that evening they rounded Duxbury Point and entered Plymouth Bay just as the sun sank behind the hills back of the town.

“Here ’s the spot where the Mayflower dropped anchor,” said the Captain, as the sloop approached a strip of sandy beach stretching like a long finger into the water.  “I generally bring the Lucy Ann to at the same place.  She can’t go out again till high tide to-morrow, for the harbor is shallow and we ’d likely run aground; so ye ’ll have the whole morning to spend with your relations, and that ’s more than I ’d want to spend with some of mine, I ’m telling ye,” and he roared with laughter.  “Relations is like victuals,” he went on.  “Some agrees with ye, and some don’t.”