third, and subsequently, several more: they presented a singular and
picturesque appearance, as one or other of these vast animals was
continually throwing up a column of water that caught the rays of the
sun, and looked very beautiful in the distance.

I looked in vain for land; I looked equally in vain for a ship; there
was nothing visible but this shoal of whales, and Mrs Reichardt
endeavoured to cheer me by describing the importance of the
whale-fishery to England, and the perils which the men meet with who
pursue the fish for the purpose of wounding them with an iron instrument
called a harpoon.

I felt much interest in these details; and my companion went into the
whole history of a whaling expedition, describing the first discovery of
the huge fish from the ship; the pursuit in the boats, and the
harpooning of the whale; its struggles after having been wounded; its
being towed to the ship's side; the subsequent manufacture of oil from
the blubber of the animal, and the preparation of whalebone.

In attending to this discourse, I completely, forgot that I was being
tossed about in the open sea, I knew not where; and where I might be in
a short time it would be proved I was equally ignorant: perhaps I should
be a corpse floating on the surface of the ocean, waiting for a tomb
till a shark came that way; perhaps I should be suffering the torments
of hunger and thirst; perhaps cast lifeless upon a rock, where my
bleached bones would remain the only monument which would then declare
that there once existed in these latitudes, such a being as the Little
Savage.

Where now could be the island I, though long so anxious to quit, now was
a thousand times more desirous of beholding? I felt that nothing could
be more agreeable to me than a glimpse of that wild rocky coast that had
so often appeared to me the walls of an intolerable prison.

I strained my eyes in vain in every direction; the line of the horizon
stretched out uninterrupted by a single break of any kind all around.
Where could we be? I often asked myself; but except that we were on the
wide ocean, neither myself nor my companion had the slightest idea of
our geographical position. We must have been blown a considerable
distance during the storm: much further than the current had taken us
from the island.

I calculated that we must have passed it by many a mile, if we had
continued the same course; but the wind had shifted several times, and
it might b