reckoned among the most formidable.

The huge brute was soon ripped up in a very unceremonious fashion.
The hook had fixed right in the stomach, which was found to be
absolutely empty, and the disappointed sailors were just going to throw
the remains overboard, when the boatswain's attention was attracted
by some large object sticking fast in one of the viscera.

"I say! what's this?" he exclaimed.

"That!" replied one of the sailors, "why, it's a piece of rock
the beast swallowed by way of ballast."

"It's just a bottle, neither more nor less, that the fellow has got
in his inside, and couldn't digest," said another of the crew.

"Hold your tongues, all of you!" said Tom Austin, the mate
of the DUNCAN. "Don't you see the animal has been such
an inveterate tippler that he has not only drunk the wine,
but swallowed the bottle?"

"What!" said Lord Glenarvan. "Do you mean to say it is a bottle
that the shark has got in his stomach."

"Ay, it is a bottle, most certainly," replied the boatswain,
"but not just from the cellar."

"Well, Tom, be careful how you take it out," said Lord Glenarvan,
"for bottles found in the sea often contain precious documents."