s a fact."

I shook hands with the young man, who laughed as he said:--

"Captain Allen is always buttering me up. But there are as good, and
better men than me with an iron on board the _Asia_. But I certainly
have had wonderful luck--for a Britisher," and he smiled slyly at his
captain.

Suddenly, we were chatting and smoking on the verandah, there came a
thrilling cry from the crew of the whaleboat, lying on the beach fifty
yards away.

"_Blo-o-w! bl-o-o-w!_"

And from the throats of three hundred natives came a roar "_Te folau! te
folau!_" ("A whale! a whale!")

The skipper and his boat-steerer sprang to their feet and looked
seaward, and there, less than a mile from the shore, was a mighty bull
cachalot, leisurely making his way through the glassy sea, swimming with
head up, and lazily rolling from side to side as if his one hundred tons
of bulk were as light as the weight of a flying-fish.

"Now, mister, you shall see what Walter and I can do with that fish,"
cried the skipper to me. "And when we've settled him, and the other
boats are towing him off to the ship, Walter and I will come on shore
again and hev something to eat--if you will invite us."

The boat flashed out from the beach, swept out of the passage through
the reef, and in twenty minutes was within striking distance of the
mighty cetacean. And, watching from the verandah, I saw the young
harpooner stand up and bury his first harpoon to the socket, following
it instantly with a second. Then slowly sank the huge head, and up came
the vast flukes in the air, and Leviathan sounded into the ocean depths
as the line spun through the stem notch, and the boat sped over the
mirror-like sea. In ten minutes she was hidden from view by a point of
land, and the last that we on the shore saw was "the dandiest lad that
ever stood up in a boat's bow" going aft to the steer-oar, and the old
white-headed skipper taking his place to use the deadly lance. And
then at the same time that the captain's boat disappeared from view,
I noticed that the _Asia_ had lowered her four other boats, which were
pulling with furious speed in the direction which the "fast" boat had
taken.

"Something must have gone wrong with the captain's boat," I thought.

Something had gone wrong, for half an hour later one of the four "loose"
boats pulled into the beach, and the old skipper, with tears streaming
down his rugged cheeks, stepped out, trembling from head to foot.

"My dand