nd commenced to swim away with long strokes, in order to get as
far as possible from the boat before the catastrophe came which we knew
was at hand. We had not got many yards before I heard a terrific crash,
and, looking back, I saw the enormous tail of the great whale towering
high out of the water, and my precious boat descending in fragments upon
it from a height of from fifteen feet to twenty feet above the agitated
waters. Oddly enough, the fore-part of the boat remained fixed to the
rope of the harpoon in the calf. My first thought, even at so terrible a
moment, and in so serious a situation, was one of bitter regret for the
loss of what I considered the only means of reaching civilisation. Like
a flash it came back to me how many weary months of toil and hope and
expectancy I had spent over that darling craft; and I remembered, too,
the delirious joy of launching it, and the appalling dismay that struck
me when I realised that it was worse than useless to me in the inclosed
lagoon. These thoughts passed through my mind in a few seconds.

At this time we had a swim of some _ten miles_ before us, but fortunately
our predicament was observed from the land, and a crowd of blacks put out
in their catamarans to help us. Some of the blacks, as I hinted before,
always accompanied me down to the shore on these trips. They never
tired, I think, of seeing me handle my giant "catamaran" and the (to
them) mysterious harpoon.

After the mother whale had wreaked its vengeance upon my unfortunate boat
it rejoined its little one, and still continued to swim round and round
it at prodigious speed, evidently in a perfect agony of concern.
Fortunately the tide was in our favour, and we were rapidly swept
inshore, even when we floated listlessly on the surface of the water. The
sea was quite calm, and we had no fear of sharks, being well aware that
we would keep them away by splashing in the water.

Before long, the catamarans came up with us, but although deeply grateful
for Yamba's and my own safety, I was still greatly distressed at the loss
of my boat. Never once did this thought leave my mind. I remembered,
too, with a pang, that I had now no tools with which to build another;
and to venture out into the open sea on a catamaran, probably for weeks,
simply meant courting certain destruction. I was a greater prisoner than
ever.

My harpoon had evidently inflicted a mortal wound on the calf whale,
because as we looked