the men was lost. Sharks rarely bite
people when a whale is bleeding, but keep following the track of the
blood. Brown took some of the men on board, and we in the spare boats,
leaving only the doctor and two hands to take care of the ship, pulled
quickly up and rescued the remainder.

We soon had the whale alongside; it was the largest we had caught--
nearly a hundred feet in length; but we got very little oil out of it,
for, having been fastened to previously, there was a huge swelling on
its back as big as a tun butt, which was, no doubt, the cause of the
blubber being so thin. We had still some spare space, and the crew were
eager to catch the additional whales required to complete our cargo,
that we might at length direct our course homeward. Although I should
have before been the most eager of any to return to England, yet now,
with the idea that had taken hold of me that Jack was somewhere in the
neighbourhood, I was anxious to remain until I had found him. Jim
shared my feelings, but I didn't suppose anybody else did.

We remained a week or more, however, after killing the last huge whale
which had cost us so much trouble, without seeing another, when the
captain determined to steer for the Ladrone Islands. As we had now been
some months without obtaining fresh provisions, we first directed our
course for the Bonins, some degrees to the eastward of the coast of
Japan. We understood that there were wild pigs, if not goats and sheep,
on them. At all events, that fish could be caught in abundance off the
shore. In a few days we sighted them, and ran under the lee of one of
the group called South Island. Here the ship was hove-to, and a boat
lowered, in which Mr Griffiths, the doctor, Horner, Jim and I, Brown
and Miles Soper and Coal, with two other men, went. We took with us
besides fishing-lines the whaling gear and a couple of muskets, three or
four casks to fill with water, and provisions for the day, for we didn't
intend to get back to the ship till evening.

Mr Griffiths, who had been there before, took the boat inside a high
reef of rocks, where he had, he said, caught a number of fish.

Our first object was to obtain bait. Miles Soper and Coal undertook to
swim on shore with baskets and catch some crabs, for which the fish in
these seas seem to have a special fondness. We pulled in as close as we
could to land them, and in a short time they filled their baskets, and
shouted to us to return an