A 12-year-old Texas boy bitten on the foot by a shark while cavorting in shallow water in the Gulf of Mexico was carried to safety by rescuers, authorities say. Nicholas Vossler was playing with friends in 3 1/2 feet of water about 50 yards from shore at Matagorda Island when a bull shark attacked, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Monday. Nearby swimmers carried Vossler to the beach and across the narrow island to a waiting boat, which took him to a fishing dock where a helicopter flew him to a local hospital. Mark Constein was in the water next to Nicholas, a home-school student who lives with his family in unincorporated Tarrant County, west of Fort Worth. "I was pretty calm about it," Constein said. "At the time it happened I wasn't aware there was a shark. I never saw it. I just saw that Nicholas was hurt and bleeding." Constein said he talked Sunday night with Cecil Vossler, the boy's father. "He had a couple of surgeries and has a couple more to come," Constein said of the 12-year-old boy. "The prognosis for recovery is good. It sounds like he still has a tough road ahead of him. Cecil said he's expecting some of the surgery to go into next week, and he may be in the hospital for a week after that."Tom Harvey, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesman, said sharks swim near people in the Gulf of Mexico's coastal waters all the time, and swimmers never see them."It may be cold comfort to some people, but they just don't attack people very often at all," he said.