"It's very pat," remarked Jack, when the stout youth rejoined the group about the fire, "that if any of us want to know about sharks, their habits, and how best to get the pirates of the sea ashore, we've got to go to Nick here."
"Yes," spoke up George, "he ought to be a walking dictionary of terms; because he's always asking questions of every cracker and sponger we meet. I honestly believe, boys, he keeps a shark book, and that he's got an idea of writing the family tree up some day."
"Oh! come off," grinned Nick; "after I've hauled a dandy weighing about half a ton on shore, and showed you what I can do, I guess the whole business can go hang, for all of me. What use are they, anyhow? You can't eat 'em."
"That's the way Nick always judges things," declared George. "If they don't happen to be good for food, he's got mighty little use for the same."
"I ain't denying it, am I?" queried the other, good-naturedly. "What are we here for, anyway, but to eat our way through this dreary old world? Of course, don't go and think I believe eating's the _only_ thing worth living for; but it cuts a big figure with me. Guess I was born half starved, and I've been tryin' all I knew how ever since to make it up."
"And by the powers, ye look that happy now, I be afther thinkin' ye must expect to pull in the champion fish this same night," Jimmy commented.
"Well, I've got a hunch that something is about due," Nick replied, confidently. "There's a fishy smell about this place, seems to me; and I just reckon that in times past many a dandy old shark has been yanked up on this same beach. That tideway looked good to me, too; and by now, as Jack said, I ought to know something about the hungry crew. Just wait and see what happens, that's all."
Jimmy became a little uneasy. Perhaps it was in the air that his day to fall had come around in due time. He cast frequent glances over toward the snubbing post as the evening drew on, with twilight succeeding the setting of the sun.
Nick had heard Jack telling how he went pickerel fishing on the ice one winter, and the methods of telling when a fish took the hook appealed to him. Consequently he employed the same sort of tactics when in pursuit of nobler game.