e
sun, deeper and darker grew the gloom upon our faces, till suddenly
Samuela leaped to his feet in our midst, and emitted a yell so
ear-piercing as to nearly deafen us. He saw the ship! Before two minutes
had passed we all saw her--God bless her!--coming down upon us like
some angelic messenger. There were no fears among us that we should be
overlooked. We knew full well how anxiously and keenly many pairs
of eyes had been peering over the sea in search of us, and we felt
perfectly sure they had sighted us long ago. On she came, gilded by the
evening glow, till she seemed glorified, moving in a halo of celestial
light, all her homeliness and clumsy build forgotten in what she then
represented to us.

Never before or since has a ship looked like that, to me, nor can I ever
forget the thankfulness, the delight, the reverence, with which I once
more saw her approaching. Straight down upon us she bore, rounding to
within a cable's length, and dropping a boat simultaneously with her
windward sweep. They had no whale--well for us they had not. In five
minutes we were on board, while our late resting-place was being hauled
alongside with great glee.

The captain shook hands with me cordially, pooh-poohing the loss of
the boat as an unavoidable incident of the trade, but expressing his
heart-felt delight at getting us all back safe. The whale we had killed
was ample compensation for the loss of several boats, though such was
the vigour with which the sharks were going for him, that it was deemed
advisable to cut in at once, working all night. We who had been rescued,
however, were summarily ordered below by the skipper, and forbidden, on
pain of his severe displeasure, to reappear until the following morning.
This great privilege we gladly availed ourselves of, awaking at daylight
quite well and fit, not a bit the worse for our queer experience of the
previous day.

The whale proved a great acquisition, for although not nearly so large
as many we had caught, he was so amazingly rich in blubber that he
actually yielded twelve and a half tuns of oil, in spite of the heavy
toll taken of him by the hungry multitudes of sharks. In addition to the
oil, we were fortunate enough to secure a lump of ambergris, dislodged
perhaps by the explosion of my bomb in the animal's bowels. It was
nearly black, wax-like to the touch, and weighed seven pounds and a
half. At the current price, it would be worth about L200, so that, taken
altoget