ed us to be brought back to give
us `four dozen' apiece at least, there and then!

The result, however, was very different to our sad anticipations; for
when we reached the deck the old commodore was standing by the poop
rail, close to the ladder on the port side leading down from thence into
the waist of the ship.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE.

"Lieutenant Robinson," said he to our persecutor, who looked ill at ease
as he stood before him, the sextant which he had snatched up in a hurry
to calculate the angle of distance of the whale and its antagonists now
hanging listlessly in his hand, "be good enough, sir, to tell those boys
that they may remain on the upper deck and look over the side, but that
they must not stand on the hammock nettings. I like discipline to be
preserved on board the ship I may have the honour to command, but I
never allow any unnecessary severity being shown to the men or boys of
the ship's company!"

Much against his will, the lieutenant, thus rebuked on the quarter-deck
in the presence not only of his own brother-officers, but in that of all
of us on the deck below as well, had now to `eat humble pie' and give us
the commodore's message; and, though Mick and I could not repress a grin
on his bowing to us with mock politeness, we could see from the look in
his underhung eyes that he intended to pay us out bye-and-bye when he
had the chance for having been obliged to beg our pardon, as he had to
do almost then.

Unhappily, though, the permission for us to look over the side again
came too late; for the thrasher and the swordfish had been too much for
the poor whale, whose huge lifeless body was now floating away to
leeward, half a cable's length astern of the ship, surrounded by an eddy
of bloody water, while its assailants had both disappeared.

"Begorrah," cried Mick, much disgusted at this, "sure, we're jist in
toime to be too late!"

In our passage from Madeira to the Canary Islands we steered south by
west, in order to avoid the Salvages.

These are a number of rocky islets, named the `Great Piton,' the `Little
Piton,' and `Ilha Grande,' lying in latitude 30 degrees 8 minutes north,
and longitude 15 degrees 55 minutes west. The largest island is covered
with bushes, amongst which thousands of sea-fowl make their nests; and,
from the fact of its not being seen until a ship be close in to it, when
these very birds tell of its propinquity, by darkening the a