"Oh, Lord Jesus!" shrieked Klaus, clinging to the stempost. "She'll kill
him! She'll kill him!"

Peer was half up now, on his knees, but as he reached out a hand to
grasp the side, the brute's jaws seized on his arm. The boy's face
was contorted with pain--another moment and the sharp teeth would have
bitten through, when, swift as thought, Peter Ronningen dropped his
oars and sent his knife straight in between the beast's eyes. The blade
pierced through to the brain, and the grip of the teeth relaxed.

"C-c-cursed d-d-devil!" stammered Peter, as he scrambled back to
his oars. Another moment, and Peer had dragged himself clear and was
kneeling by the forward thwart, holding the ragged sleeve of his wounded
arm, while the blood trickled through his fingers.

When at last they were pulling homeward, the little boat overloaded with
the weight of the great carcase, all at once they stopped rowing.

"Where is Klaus?" asked Peer--for the doctor's son was gone from where
he had sat, clinging to the stem.

"Why--there he is--in the bottom!"

There lay the big lout of fifteen, who already boasted of his
love-affairs, learned German, and was to be a gentleman like his
father--there he lay on the bottom-boards in the bow in a dead faint.

The others were frightened at first, but Peer, who was sitting washing
his wounded arm, took a dipper full of water and flung it in the