and still
maintaining a close watch upon the country generally through the
telescope. It was very rugged and broken until we reached the bottom of
the bay, where the hills, from a height of some eight hundred feet, sank
into the plain. The hill-sides, inside as outside the bay, nourished a
fairly dense growth of low, coarse scrub, that I searched with the
glass, in vain, for any sign of life. But I noticed, very early after
our passage between the two headlands, that, for some reason which I was
quite unable to guess at, the waters of the bay were swarming with
sharks--the first that we had seen since the occurrence of the wreck--
wherefore I at once christened the great sheet of water "Shark Bay",
while to the island itself I gave the name of "North Island."

The headlands that guarded the entrance to Shark Bay were a pair of
lofty promontories rising to a height of some four or five hundred feet,
forming part of the range of hills that engirdled the bay on either
hand; but while the range on the western side sloped down to the water's
edge, sinking into a plain at a distance of about ten miles from the
entrance, the range on the eastern side, some sixteen miles long,
gradually receded from the shore line as it swept southwards, the space
between its foot and the beach being occupied by a swamp lying so low
that it was difficult to judge, in places, the precise line of
demarcation between land and water. The southern half of the island
consisted entirely of low, flat ground, sparsely covered with coarse
grass and isolated clumps of scrub, across which, at a distance of some
eight miles, the high, precipitous cliffs of the island where we
encountered the apes could be distinctly seen.

By the time that we arrived at the inner, or southern extremity of the
bay the sun had declined to within a finger's width of the ridge of the
western range of hills. It was clear, therefore, that there could be no
further exploration for us until the morrow, and I began to look about
in search of a suitable spot whereon to pitch our camp for the night.
And to choose seemed difficult. The western shore of the bay, with its
broken ground and scrubby vegetation looked uninviting to say the least
of it, in addition to which it was on the other side of those same
hills, at a spot only a few miles distant, that we had, that afternoon,
witnessed the terrific fight between those two horrible, unknown
creatures; and I had no inclination to