Following the shore line, with the wide, glinting stretch of water spread out before them, the talk of the boys almost inevitably turned on sharks, and presently waxed so argumentative that none of them seemed to notice Haddon’s silence. Nobody knew very much about the subject, but that did not prevent them from taking side and debating hotly. Hinckley and Champ Ferris supported Cavanaugh’s argument that the species found in Northern waters was entirely harmless, and probably there were none in the neighborhood of the camp anyway. Taggart had seen something else, or made up the whole story, they declared. Ritter and McBride opposed them as a matter of principle, and upheld their side with such hair-raising anecdotes of things they had heard and read that they actually succeeded in scaring themselves, besides arousing a certain amount of nervous apprehension in the minds of the other two. Cavanaugh alone laughed them to scorn. When they returned to the forbidden bathing beach, which was hidden from the camp by a thick screen of evergreens, it was plain that he meant to carry out his purpose.