o provide themselves with a fresh stock
of food.

Of course their thoughts were directed towards the deep, or rather its
finny denizens. There was nothing else above, beneath, or around them
that could have been coupled with the idea of food.

Their former success in fishing might have given them confidence,--and
would have done so but for an unfortunate change that had taken place in
their circumstances.

Their hooks were among the articles now missing. The harpoons which
they had handled with such deadly effect upon the carcass of the
_cachalot_ had been there left,--sticking up out of the back of the dead
leviathan composing that improvised spit erected for roasting the
shark-steaks. In short, every article of iron,--even to their own
knives, which had been thrown loosely into the boat,--was now at the
bottom of the sea.

There was not a moiety of metal left out of which they could manufacture
a fish-hook; and if there had been it would not have mattered much,
since they could not discover a scrap of meat sufficient to have baited
it.

There seemed no chance whatever of fishing or obtaining fish in any
fashion; and after turning the subject ever and over in their minds,
they at length relinquished it in despair.

At this crisis their thoughts reverted to the _cachalot_,--not the live,
leaping leviathan, whose hostile behaviour had so suddenly blighted
their bright prospects; but the dead one, upon whose huge carcass they
had so lately stood. There they might still find food,--more
shark-meat. If not, there was the whale-beef, or blubber: coarse
viands, it is true, but such as may sustain life. Of that there was
enough to have replenished the larder of a whole ship's crew,--of a
squadron!

It was just possible they could find their way back to it, for the wind,
down which they had been running, was still in the same quarter; and the
whole distance they had made during the night might in time be
recovered.

At the best, it would have been a difficult undertaking and doubtful of
success, even if there had been no other obstacle than the elements
standing in their way.

But there was,--one more dreaded than either the opposition of the wind
or the danger of straying from their course.

In all likelihood their pursuers had returned to the spot which they had
forsaken; and might at that very moment be mooring their craft to the
huge pectoral fin that had carried the cable of the _Catamaran_.

In view