upon the fragment, ripped
it in a hundred pieces. I endeavored to catch her by the throat once
more, but failed, and rolled over on my face, and in doing so, disclosed
the bloody streak between my shoulders; she saw it, and at the same
instant sprang on me. I felt her teeth as they met in my neck, while her
terrible cry, the most appalling ears ever heard, rang through my brain.

"Save him! Save him! She's killing him!" were now heard on every side;
but none dared to fire for fear of wounding me, and the terrible rage
of the animal deterred all from approaching her. The struggle was now
a life-and-death one; and alternately falling and rolling, we fought--I
cannot tell how, for the blood blinded me as it came from a wound in my
forehead; and I only felt one firm purpose in my heart: "If I fall, she
shall not survive me." Several of the sailors came near enough to strike
her with their cutlasses; but these wounds only increased her rage, and
I cried to them to desist.

"Shoot her! put a bullet through her!" cried Halkett. "Let none dare
to shoot her!" cried Sir Dudley, loudly. I just heard these words, as,
after a fierce struggle, in which she had seized me by the shoulder, I
fell against the bulwark. With a last effort I staggered to my knees,
flung open the gangway, and then, with an exertion that to myself
seemed my very last on earth, I seized her by the throat and hurled her
backwards into the sea. On 'hands and knees I leaned forward to see her
as the rapid Gulf-stream, hurrying onward to the ocean, bore her away;
and then, as my sight grew fainter, I fell back upon the deck, and
believed I was dying.

CHAPTER XI. MEANS AND MEDITATIONS

It was the second evening after my lion adventure, and I was stretched
in my hammock in a low, half-torpid state, not a limb nor a joint in all
my body that had not its own peculiar pain; while a sharp wound in my
neck, and another still deeper one in the fleshy part of my shoulder,
had just begun that process called "union,"--one which, I am bound
to say, however satisfactory in result, is often very painful in its
progress. The slightest change of position gave me intolerable anguish,
as I lay, with closed eyes and crossed hands, not a bad resemblance of
those stone saints one sees upon old tombstones.

My faculties were clear and acute, so that, having abundant leisure for
the occupation, I had nothing better to do than take a brief retrospect
of my late life. Such revi