The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

a wild beast is deterred by a fire, or a horse is scared by a log at the road-side. At this thought he grasped. It was his only hope. As he swam, he plashed in the water, with all his force, with arms and legs, making it boil and foam all around him. This retarded his progress somewhat; but at any rate, it seemed to prolong his safety, for the monster did not seem inclined to draw nearer.

      The moments passed on. They were not far from land,—yet, O, how far that distance seemed to each despairing swimmer! Upon their distance what issues depended! O, that they had thought of the danger in time, or had seen it a little while before!

      The moments passed on—moments terrible, full of sickening anguish, of horror intolerable! How long those moments seemed! To Tom each moment was prolonged to the duration of an age, and an age of hideous expectation—expectation of a doom so frightful, so abhorrent, that every nerve tingled, and every fibre of his body quivered. And there, through the noise of the splashings made by his own efforts, he could plainly distinguish the movements of the monster behind. It did not seem nearer, but it was near enough to seize him at any moment. Why did the monster delay? Was it his splashings which deterred it? Tom hoped so, and thrust the water aside with greater energy.

      And now he could hear the movement of the monster a little towards his right. It seemed to him that his pursuer was about to close with him, to attack him from another quarter. He remembered reading somewhere that sharks swim around their prey before seizing it. This movement, he thought, was for that purpose. Every moment he expected to see the dread form of that pursuer appearing between him and Phil, who was nearest. But he dared not look to assure himself. There was too much horror in the awful sight. He dared not turn his head to look behind; he dared not turn his eyes even to one side. He could only keep them fixed, with a wide stare, upon vacancy, straight before him.

      The moments passed on,—the awful moments, each of which threatens death, when the delay of the impending doom fills the soul with awful suspense; still the monster hesitated to seize his prey. Still Tom’s ears rang with the noise of his pursuer. Still the other boys, as though their tongues were frozen into silence, hurried to the shore. Still they waited, expecting every instant to hear the terrible shriek which should announce the awful doom of Tom. But the doom was still delayed, and still Tom waited, and still the others listened. So they all hastened, till each one’s heart seemed almost ready to burst, through the frenzied energy of his efforts, and the intensity of his emotions. And there, behind them all,—a little on Tom’s right,—the black muzzle advanced over the surface of the water.

      In that desperate struggle, when they made such frantic efforts to reach the shore, Bruce happened to be first. The shore to which they were swimming was that which happened to be nearest; not the grassy knoll before mentioned, but a beach covered with gravel, which was intermixed with larger stones. Bushes grew close down to this beach, and beyond these was that road which had so disgusted the boys.

      At this place Bruce first arrived. His feet touched bottom. No sooner did he feel the solid ground under his feet, than all his panic left him, all his courage returned, and his presence of mind. Tom’s expected death-yell had not yet burst upon his ear; not yet had his shriek announced the grasp of the monster. There might yet be time to save. In an instant he had thought of what he should do. Plunging through the water, and bounding forward, he soon reached the beach; and then, stooping down, he hastily gathered several large stones. Then he turned, and rushing back a few steps, stood with uplifted arm, taking aim, and preparing to hurl these stones at the monster. At that very moment Arthur reached the place, and turned to look back, standing close by Bruce. Phil was now only a few yards away, swimming in, with horror yet stamped upon his face. Beyond him was Tom, swimming, kicking, plunging, rolling, dashing the water in all directions, and making as much commotion as would have satisfied an ordinary whale. As Tom thus swam on, his despairing glance caught sight of the forms of Bruce and Arthur. There they stood, up to their waists in water—Bruce with uplifted arm, holding an enormous stone, which he was about to throw—while in his other hand were several more stones. Arthur stood by his side.

      Tom devoured them with his eyes; and he struggled on, wondering, yet scarcely daring to hope—wondering whether the stone which Bruce was preparing to throw would drive back the monster. To him it seemed that Bruce was delaying for an unaccountable time. Why did he stand idle, when every moment was so precious? Why did he delay to throw? Why did he not do something? Why did he stand there as if rooted to the spot doing nothing? Was there some new horror? Were the monster’s jaws already opened to seize his prey?

      Tom would have cried to Bruce to throw, but he could not speak. Not a sound could he utter. The thought came to him that Bruce was afraid to throw, for fear that the stone might strike him instead of the shark. What matter? Far better to throw, and run the risk. This he would have said, but he could not in that paralysis of horror.

      Suddenly a frown came over Bruce’s face—which frown as suddenly faded away, and was succeeded by a blank look, accompanied by an indescribable expression. The same changes passed over Arthur’s face. Tom saw it all, in his despair, and was bewildered. What was this? Were they deserting him? Would they give him up? Impossible!

      Yet it seemed as if they would. For suddenly Bruce’s uplifted arm descended, and the stones all dropped into the water. The blank look upon his face was succeeded by one of astonishment, which faded away into various expressions, which successively indicated all the varying shades of vexation, shame, and sheepishness. Arthur’s face was equally eloquent. Had not Tom’s feelings so preoccupied him, he might have found a study in those two faces; but as it was, he was not in a position to think of such a thing; for these looks and gestures only served to inspire him with greater alarm.

      “They can do nothing,” he thought; and the thought brought to his soul a bitterness as of death.

      At this moment Phil’s feet touched bottom. He rushed up to Bruce and Arthur, and turned, as they had turned, to look back.

      And at the same moment the abhorrent sight appeared to Tom—of the black muzzle shooting through the water close by his right shoulder. Involuntarily he shrunk aside, with the thought that his last hour had come.

      CHAPTER XIII.

      Suddenly a roar of laughter burst from Bruce.

      “It’s a dog! It’s a dog!” he cried.—”Tom’s shark’s turned out to be a dog!”

      And saying this, he burst into another roar of laughter. The laughter proved contagious. Arthur and Phil both joined in. Their recent horror had been so great that this sudden and unexpected turn affected them in a comical way, and the reaction was in proportion to their former panic fear. So their laughter was loud, boisterous, and unrestrained.

      At the very moment when this cry had burst forth from Bruce, together with the peals of laughter, Tom had shrunk back in horror from the black muzzle that appeared on his right. But as he did so, and at the very moment of this horror in which his eyes were fixed on the monster, this monster became plainly revealed, and he saw it as it was.

      He saw, what Bruce and the others now saw—a dog! a dog whose long, sharp muzzle and forehead were above the water, as also part of his back and his tail. He was a hound of some kind. Where he had come from, or where he was going to, or why he had appeared among them, they were, of course, unable to conjecture. Their whole recent terror had thus been the result of pure fancy in Tom’s case, and in the case of the others the result of Tom’s first shriek of alarm. In the case of all of them, however, the whole trouble was owing to the belief, of which they were not yet able to divest themselves, that this cove was some very sequestered spot. So convinced had they been of this, that even the sight of a public road had not altogether disabused them. They had been determined to find here the haunt of the buccaneers, and were unwilling to think that it might be a common resort, or even a regular thoroughfare. And therefore, when Tom had first caught sight of this black muzzle appearing above the surface of the water, he had been incapable of thinking about anything except a shark; and the horror that this thought created within him had been communicated to the others by his cries. Tom was the real cause of the whole mistake, and no one felt this more keenly than Tom himself; yet the others were all too much ashamed of their own recent terrors to twit or taunt him with his unfounded alarm.

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