There was a tremendous swirl in the clear water directly, as the sharks dashed at it, going over one another like dogs in their eagerness to be first, for this was a piece of fourteen or fifteen pounds weight. The next moment they were tearing at it, but baffled somewhat by the strong wire binding, while it sank rapidly, and the thin copper wire, that had fallen on the smooth surface like a line of light, ran rapidly over the side. "_Now_," cried Mr Parkley loudly. As the word left his lips, Dutch applied the other end of the wire to the galvanic battery, an invisible spark darted along the thin copper to the case of dynamite; there was a dull rumble; the ship shivered as if struck by some heavy blow; a column of water rose in the air and sank back; and the schooner rolled from side to side as a large wave lifted her, let her down, and then rushed onward over the rocks to the shore, running up the sands in a line of foam, and laving the trunks of the palms beyond the narrow strip. The men clung to the bulwarks, looking startled, but seeing that the danger was over, they uttered a loud cheer, for as the water subsided the clear limpidity was gone--sand, blood, fragments of weed and flesh, all combined to make it murky; and, what set the men off cheering again, there were the bodies of the seven sharks, four of them in scraps, the other three apparently uninjured, but floating back downwards quite dead, and with the foul pieces gliding slowly off with the hardly perceptible current. "Well, I confess, Dutch, I should never have thought of that," exclaimed Mr Parkley. "It was a good idea." "So the men seem to think," said the captain, as a couple slipped down into the jolly-boat, and, sculling it about, secured about a couple of dozen large fish that had also been killed by the dynamite. "But that was too near the schooner for safety: a shock or two like that would shake the masts out of her hull." "It was more powerful than I expected," said Dutch. "We will fire the next from the boat with a good length of wire, and the schooner must be fifty or a hundred yards away." "But you will not fire another unless you are troubled with sharks?" queried the captain. "I intend to fire a canister exactly beneath where we stand," said Dutch, "so as to sweep away the growth and sand and shingle that have been accumulating for the last two hundred years. One of those charges will do more in an instant than the men could do under water in a week." He raised his eyes as he spoke, and found that the mulatto was listening intently to every word, but with his eyes half-closed and a bitter look upon his face.