that we had no Jonah on board.

We lost an anchor through the incident, and received some small damage
to the keel, but no other injury was done--even this, I believe, upon
second thought, was unintentional--done in playfulness only! "A shark
can take a joke," it is said, and crack one too, but for broad, rippling
humour the whale has no equal.

"If this be a sample of our adventures in the beginning," thought I, "we
shall have enough and to spare by the end of the voyage." A visit from
this quarter had not been counted on; but Sancho Panza says, "When least
aware starts the hare," which in our case, by the by, was a great whale!

When our breath came back and the hair on our heads settled to a normal
level, we set sail, and dodged about under the lee of the cape till a
cove, with a very enticing sand beach at the head of it, opened before
us, some three miles northwest of where we lost the anchor in the
remarkable adventure with the whale. The "spare bower" was soon bent to
the cable. Then we stood in and anchored near a cliff, over which was a
goat-path leading in the direction of a small fishing village, about a
mile away. Sheering the boat in to the rocky side of the cove which was
steep to, we leaped out, warp in hand, and made fast to a boulder above
the tidal flow, then, scrambling over the cliff, we repaired to the
village, first improvising a spare anchor from three sticks and a stone
which answered the purpose quite well.

Judging at once that we were strangers the villagers came out to meet
us, and made a stir at home to entertain us in the most hospitable
manner, after the custom of the country, and with the villagers was a
gentleman from Canada, a Mr. Newkirk, who, as we learned, was engaged,
when the sea was smooth, in recovering treasure that was lost near the
cape in the British warship _Thetis_, which was wrecked there in 1830.
The treasure, some millions in silver coins and gold in bars, from Peru
for England, was dumped in the cove, which has since taken the name of
the ship that bore it there and, as I have said, came to grief in that
place which is on the west shore near the end of the cape.

Some of the coins were given to us to be treasured as souvenirs of the
pleasant visit. We found in Mr. Newkirk a versatile, roving genius; he
had been a schoolmaster at home, captain of a lake schooner once, had
practised medicine, and preached some, I think; and what else I do not
know. He had tried many t