Ben Brace, was dragged out of his
native element, and hauled up the well-greased incline towards the
highest point on the carcass of the _cachalot_.

There, notwithstanding his struggles and the desperate as well as
dangerous fluking of his posterior fins, he was soon despatched by the
axe, wielded with all the might and dexterity which the Coromantee could
command.

Another shark was "hooked," and then despatched in a similar fashion;
and then another and another, until Ben Brace believed that enough
shark-flesh had been obtained to furnish the _Catamaran_ with stores for
the most prolonged voyage.

At all events, they would now have food--such as it was--to last as long
as the water with which the hand of Providence alone seemed to have
provided them.

CHAPTER SIXTY FOUR.

THE THICK WATERS.

The most palatable portions of the sharks' flesh having been stripped
from the bones and cut into thin slices, were now to be submitted to a
drying, or rather broiling process. This was to be accomplished by a
fire of spermaceti.

As already stated, there was no scarcity on the score of this fuel. The
"case" of the _cachalot_ contained enough to have roasted all the sharks
within a circle of ten mile around it; and, to all appearance, there
were hundreds of them inside that circumference. Indeed, that part of
the ocean where the dead whale had been found, though far from any land,
is at all times most prolific in animal life. Sometimes the sea for
miles around a ship will be seen swarming with fish of various kinds,
while the air is filled with birds. In the water may be seen large
"schools" of whales, "basking"--as the whalers term it--at intervals,
"spouting" forth their vaporous breath, or moving slowly onward,--some
of them, every now and then, exhibiting their uncouth gambols. Shoals
of porpoises, albacores, bonitos, and other gregarious fishes will
appear in the same place,--each kind in pursuit of its favourite prey,
while sharks, threshers, and sword-fish, accompanied by their "pilots"
and "suckers," though in lesser numbers, here also abound,--from the
very abundance of the species on which these sea-monsters subsist
"Flocks" of flying-fish sparkle in the sun with troops of bonitos
gliding watchful below, while above them the sky will sometimes be
literally clouded with predatory birds,--gulls, boobies, gannets, tropic
and frigate-birds, albatrosses, and a score of other kinds but little
known, and as