three small black triangles lifted at the moment from the surface of the water. "Aren't those sharks?"
"Yes, they are."
"They're going the other way, aren't they, Platter?"
"Yes, toward shore."
She laughed delightedly. "How thrilling! If they keep on they'll pass right by Nelson. You s'pose he'll see them? You s'pose it'll make him nervous?"
"Do him good if they did," Platter said severely, and then added, with little hope for his former friend's chances of improvement: "But they never do hurt anybody and I guess he knows it."
Here his surmise was correct. To the best of Nelson's information the sharks in these waters had never attacked a living person and were not maneaters; nevertheless there is a striking difference between knowing such a thing on shore, or on a staunch vessel, and knowing it in a fourteen-foot canoe undecided between swamping and capsizing. For the three sharks did indeed hold their course toward the coast; Nelson did indeed see them; and they did indeed make him nervous, though without doing him the "good" so securely prophesied for him by young Mr. Thomas.
