fied that I jumped up, opened my great
jack-knife, and was rushing at the shark, when my uncle laid his hand
upon my arm.

"Don't be foolish, Nat, but take your lesson like a man. You will not
despise the strength of a shark for the future."

"Why, it was like touching a great steel spring, uncle," I said.

"If anything I should say that the backbone of a shark has more power in
it when set in motion than a steel spring, Nat," he said. "There, now,
our friend is helpless, and we can examine him in peace."

For, after thrashing the deck with a series of tremendous blows with his
tail, the shark had his quietus given to him with a few blows of a
hatchet, and as he lay upon the deck my uncle pointed out to me the
peculiarity of the monster's structure, and after we had examined his
nasty sharp triangular teeth in the apparently awkwardly placed mouth, I
was shown how it was that a shark had such wonderful power of propelling
itself through the water, for in place of having an ordinary fin-like
tail, made up of so many bones with a membrane between, the shark's
spine is continued right along to the extremity of the upper curve of
its propeller, the other curve being comparatively small.

The flying-fish in the Red Sea have been described too often for it to
be necessary for me to say anything about the beauty of these fishy
swallows, but we saw hundreds of them dart out of the sea, skim along
for a distance, and then drop in again. Then there were glimpses had in
the deep clear blue--for that was the colour I found the Red Sea--of
fishes with scales of orange, vermilion, and gold, bright as the
gorgeous sunsets that dyed sea and sky of such wondrous hues evening
after evening before darkness fell all at once, and the great stars,
brighter, bigger, and clearer than I had ever seen them before, turned
the heavens into a vast ocean of gems.

Day and night seemed to me to follow one another with wonderful
rapidity, till one morning, as the steamer was panting and throbbing on
its way, my uncle pointed to what looked like a low distant haze far
away on our right.

"Do you see those mountains, Nat?" he said.

"Mountains, uncle! Are these mountains?"

"Yes, my boy, in a land that I could find it in my heart to visit, only
that is not quite wild enough for our purpose."

"What place is it, then?" I said, gazing eagerly at the faint distant
line.

"Sumatra, Nat;" and as he spoke the long-shaped island, so familiar