ng into the water and swimming out to the
catamaran, which was still several hundred yards away from me. Would it
_never_ draw near? I thought, wild with impatience. And then, to my
horror, I saw that it was closely followed by a number of sharks, which
swam round and round it expectantly. Seeing this, I could contain myself
no longer. Sternly commanding my dog not to follow me, I waded into the
waves and then swam boldly out to the catamaran, taking good care,
however, to make a great noise as I swam, by shouting and splashing in
order to frighten away the sharks. When eventually I did come up to the
floating platform of logs, I found that there were four blacks upon it--a
man, a woman, and two boys. All were lying quite prostrate through
exhaustion, apparently more dead than alive. The sharks still hung on
persistently, but at length I drove them away by beating the water with
my oar, with which I then proceeded to paddle the catamaran ashore. You
see, the oar I grasped when Bruno came to give the alarm proved of
inestimable value; and so all through my marvellous years of sojourn
among the cannibals an undeniable Providence guided my every action. But
this will be seen from my narrative in a hundred amazing instances. I
climbed aboard the catamaran and paddled it into shallow water; and then,
jumping overboard again I pulled it right up on to the beach, and carried
the four blacks one by one into my hut. They were in a most pitiable
state of collapse. Their tongues were swollen and protruding out of
their mouths, and for a long time I could get nothing down their throats.
First of all I tried to revive them with cold water, but found they could
not swallow.

Then I remembered the rum I had saved from the wreck all this time, and
procuring some I rubbed their bodies with it, tied wet bandages round
their necks, and rolled them about in wet sails, in the hope that in this
way their bodies might absorb the necessary liquid. You see I had an
idea that they were dying from want of water. All four were terribly
emaciated, and in the last stages of exhaustion. After two or three
hours' treatment, the two boys recovered consciousness, and some little
time later the man also showed signs of reviving, but the woman did not
come to until the afternoon. None of them, of course, were able to walk;
and in the meantime they did nothing but drink water. They seemed not to
realise what had happened or where they were