A light breeze carried them across the equator; but soon after they got becalmed, and it was dreary work, and the ship rolled gently, but continuously, and upset Lord Tadcaster’s stomach again, and quenched his manly spirit.

At last they were fortunate enough to catch the southeast trade, but it was so languid at first that the ship barely moved through the water, though they set every stitch, and studding sails alow and aloft, till really she was acres of canvas.

While she was so creeping along, a man in the mizzentop noticed an enormous shark gliding steadily in her wake.  This may seem a small incident, yet it ran through the ship like wildfire, and caused more or less uneasiness in three hundred stout hearts; so near is every seaman to death, and so strong the persuasion in their superstitious minds, that a shark does not follow a ship pertinaciously without a prophetic instinct of calamity.

Unfortunately, the quartermaster conveyed this idea to Lord Tadcaster, and confirmed it by numerous examples to prove that there was always death at hand when a shark followed the ship.

Thereupon Tadcaster took it into his head that he was under a relapse, and the shark was waiting for his dead body:  he got quite low-spirited.

Staines told Fitzroy.  Fitzroy said, “Shark be hanged!  I’ll have him on deck in half an hour.”  He got leave from the captain:  a hook was baited with a large piece of pork, and towed astern by a stout line, experienced old hands attending to it by turns.

The shark came up leisurely, surveyed the bait, and, I apprehend, ascertained the position of the hook.  At all events, he turned quietly on his back, sucked the bait off, and retired to enjoy it.

Every officer in the ship tried him in turn, but without success; for, if they got ready for him, and, the moment he took the bait, jerked the rope hard, in that case he opened his enormous mouth so wide that the bait and hook came out clear.  But, sooner or later, he always got the bait, and left his captors the hook.

This went on for days, and his huge dorsal fin always in the ship’s wake.

Then Tadcaster, who had watched these experiments with hope, lost his spirit and appetite.

Staines reasoned with him, but in vain.  Somebody was to die; and, although there were three hundred and more in the ship, he must be the one.  At last he actually made his will, and threw himself into Staines’s arms, and gave him messages to his mother and Lady Cicely; and ended by frightening himself into a fit.

This roused Staines’s pity, and also put him on his mettle.  What, science be beaten by a shark!

He pondered the matter with all his might; and at last an idea came to him.

He asked the captain’s permission to try his hand.  This was accorded immediately, and the ship’s stores placed at his disposal very politely, but with a sly, comical grin.