Everything was ready for the start, but he lingered on,
spending much time in Joan's company and thereby increasing the dislike
Sheldon had taken to him. He went swimming with her, in point of
rashness exceeding her; and dynamited fish with her, diving among the
hungry ground-sharks and contesting with them for possession of the
stunned prey, until he earned the approval of the whole Tahitian crew.
Arahu challenged him to tear a fish from a shark's jaws, leaving half to
the shark and bringing the other half himself to the surface; and Tudor
performed the feat, a flip from the sandpaper hide of the astonished
shark scraping several inches of skin from his shoulder. And Joan was
delighted, while Sheldon, looking on, realized that here was the hero of
her adventure-dreams coming true. She did not care for love, but he felt
that if ever she did love it would be that sort of a man--"a man who
exhibited," was his way of putting it.
He felt himself handicapped in the presence of Tudor, who had the gift of
making a show of all his qualities. Sheldon knew himself for a brave
man, wherefore he made no advertisement of the fact. He knew that just
as readily as the other would he dive among ground-sharks to save a life,
but in that fact he could find no sanction for the foolhardy act of
diving among sharks for the half of a fish.
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