"It's in the after locker, sir." "Look smart, then," cried the Captain excitedly. "Bear a hand and get it at once." At this order, Dick, who, like Bob, had thought "discretion the better part of valour," and got behind the windlass, in order to have some substantial obstacle between himself and the trawl-net which the Captain, with Mr Dugald Strong's aid, had partly dragged into the well of the cutter, now crawled out from his retreat; and keeping over well to leeward on the other side of the boom, proceeded to the locker in the stern-sheets, from whence he took out a small axe and handed it to Captain Dresser. "Ha!" ejaculated the old sailor, as he gripped the weapon tightly and belaboured with the back of it, using all the vigour of his still nervous right arm, the bag, or "pocket" of the net, in which the body of some big fish was seen to be entangled; although neither its form nor appearance could be distinctly distinguished, the folds and meshes being so tightly wrapped round it. "I'll soon settle him!" "Hold hard!" shouted out Bob's father, at about the second blow with the head of the axe over the gunwale. "You very nearly cut my arm off then! Lucky for me you were not using the edge of your hatchet." "Beg your pardon, I'm sure," apologised the Captain. "But these brutes are uncommonly tough." "More than my arm is," said Mr Strong ruefully, rubbing this member tenderly. "What sort of beast is it--not a real shark, surely? I always imagined those beggars to be very much bigger." "No," replied the other, satisfied from the net being now still that he had "settled" his victim. "It is what is called a `fox-shark,' or dog- fish." "Ah," exclaimed Bob, climbing down from the rigging now that he saw all danger was over, "I thought I heard it bark just like a dog when you and dad hauled up the trawl." "So did I," chimed in Nellie, likewise coming to the stern again from her place of refuge. "It sounded just like Rover's bark when he's sometimes shut up for being naughty." "You are both right," said the Captain, who, with the assistance of their father, had now lifted the beam and net over the side into the well of the boat and was busy unfolding the meshes of the net. "The brute not only barks, but bites, too, if he gets a chance." "Oh!" cried Bob and Nell together; and they, with Dick, waited anxiously to see the monster disclosed--a deep-drawn "O-o-oh!" "There!" ejaculated the Captain a moment after, when he had extracted the dead body of the dog-fish, nearly five feet long, from the net and turned it over with his foot so that they should see its wide shark- mouth and rows of little teeth set on edge, looking like so many small- tooth combs arranged parallel to each other. "What do you say to that for a nibble, eh?"