“Why not?” said Mate Susan.
“Mister Mate,” said Peggy, “have you ever scaled shark?”
“Not yet,” said Susan.
“It’s awful,” said Peggy.
“We’d better start on it at once,” said Susan. “It’s late, anyway.”
They went down to the landing-place where the great green and white mottled fish with its huge head and wicked eyes lay on the stones. They knelt beside it, each with a knife, and began scraping.
“You scrape from its middle to its tail, I’ll scrape from its head to its middle,” said Peggy.
The others watched. Roger hung round the mates as near as he could. He could not take his eyes off the fish.
“Whatever you do, don’t get your hand into its mouth,” said Peggy, when Roger tried to measure its head with his hand. “I did once, with a smaller one than this, and I couldn’t hold a rope for a month.”
“Why?” said Roger.
“Look at its teeth,” said Peggy, and she stopped scraping and opened its huge jaws with a stone.
Roger looked in at the rows and rows of sharp teeth pointing backwards and the long teeth, like a dog’s, in the lower jaw.
“Perhaps it’s a good thing there were no sharks in Houseboat Bay,” he said.
“Why?” said Peggy.