"It's just laughing at us!" Mel fumed.
At last, after winning its confidence with several bits of fish, the
boys succeeded in snaring the porpoise. Tom clambered onto the _Sea
Hound_'s deck and helped Zimby haul their catch aboard. "Quacking"
reproachfully, it was lowered through the hatch and placed in the tank,
which was then pumped full of salt water.
As soon as the _Sea Hound_ arrived at Fearing, Tom phoned Chow Winkler
at Enterprises and asked him to fly out to the base.
"Pardner, how'd you like to ride herd on this critter and gentle it down
for me?" Tom asked, when he showed Chow the porpoise.
It had been transferred to a huge, glass-paneled tank which had been set
up just outside Tom's Fearing Island laboratory during his flight to the
Florida Keys.
"Reckon I kin try makin' friends with it," Chow declared.
The porpoise stared morosely at Chow. The kindly old Texan's heart was
touched by the odd creature. To his delight, it soon responded to his
friendly overtures and quickly recovered its good nature. By the next
morning the porpoise was playing catch with Chow, or else swimming over
to have its back scratched. The cook named it Smiley.
"She's kind of a sea cow," he told Tom, "and you got to talk to my
Smiley like any cow!" Tom grinned and refrained from explaining to Chow
that a real "sea cow" was a walrus.
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