Trouble in Paradise by Franklin W. Dixon

Author:Franklin W. Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

6.

Jaws of Death

Sheesh!

There’s nothing like a shark coming at you to focus your mind.

“Stay close together!” I yelled.

I knew that, to a shark, Joe and I would look like a much bigger fish if we stuck together. Sharks don’t take on prey that’s bigger than they are—not unless they’re very, very hungry, that is.

This shark made a quick pass, then started doing slow circles around us. That was good news, I figured—he must have been at least a little nervous about attacking us.

But as the minutes went by, the shark was joined by a bunch of his friends. Soon there were dozens of them—and the circle of fins around us was getting smaller, and tighter, and closer, by the minute.

I kept scanning the horizon, looking for Cap’n and his boat, but they were nowhere in sight. “How long since we surfaced?” I asked Joe.

“About ten minutes?”

“That guy’s not coming back for us, is he?”

“Maybe he just can’t find us, Frank.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We’ve been set up.”

“We could have been drifting all this time. They say the currents are fast around here.”

Joe lowered his mask and dove under the surface for a second. “The wreck’s nowhere in sight,” he said. “He could be looking for us back by the dive site.”

I doubted it. But neither of us could doubt that we’d been drifting all this while and had no idea where we were, or where we were headed.

The fins were close now. One shark wouldn’t have dared attack the two of us together, but there was now a gang of them—and they would be much braver in a pack.

Our time was running out, and Joe and I knew it. There was no land in sight. Nothing but us, and fins, and …

… that red thing, sticking up out of the water in the distance, getting closer by the second.

A buoy!

“Joe!” I shouted, pointing toward it. We swam for all we were worth, the current helping us along—it really was fast here. The buoy seemed to rush at us.

Just as we were about to reach it, I felt something grab my rubber flipper and tug hard.

I shook my leg frantically, and the flipper pulled free. “Jaws” thrashed around, trying to bite the flipper in half.

He was welcome to it, I thought, as I climbed onto the buoy. Joe grabbed onto the opposite side, and we both held on for dear life.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Now we wait until somebody spots us.”

“Great. Just great.”

“Hey—it’s better than being shark food.”

The sharks hadn’t given up on having us for breakfast—not by a long shot. I took off my remaining flipper and batted them away as best I could, but they were persistent.

Finally, after what seemed like endless hours of shark-swatting, a boat came into view over the horizon. I saw with relief that it was not the Leaky Sieve—it was far too big for that.

Good. The last thing we wanted was for Cap’n to come back and finish us off. No, this was a National Park Service boat.

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