rful creatures--some of them apparently ten feet in
length, with an ivory spear six or eight feet long projecting from their
noses. We often saw them darting after other fish, and no doubt they
sometimes killed them with their ivory swords. Jack remembered having
heard once of a swordfish attacking a ship, which seemed strange indeed;
but as they are often in the habit of attacking whales, perhaps it
mistook the ship for one. This swordfish ran against the vessel with
such force that it drove its sword quite through the thick planks; and
when the ship arrived in harbour, long afterwards, the sword was found
still sticking in it!

Sharks did not often appear; but we took care never again to bathe in
deep water without leaving one of our number in the boat, to give us
warning if he should see a shark approaching. As for the whales, they
never came into our lagoon; but we frequently saw them spouting in the
deep water beyond the reef. I shall never forget my surprise the first
day I saw one of these huge monsters close to me. We had been rambling
about on the reef during the morning, and were about to re-embark in our
little boat to return home, when a loud blowing sound caused us to wheel
rapidly round. We were just in time to see a shower of spray falling,
and the flukes or tail of some monstrous fish disappear in the sea a few
hundred yards off. We waited some time to see if he would rise again.
As we stood, the sea seemed to open up at our very feet; an immense
spout of water was sent with a snort high into the air, and the huge,
blunt head of a sperm-whale rose before us. It was so large that it
could easily have taken our little boat, along with ourselves, into its
mouth! It plunged slowly back into the sea, like a large ship
foundering, and struck the water with its tail so forcibly as to cause a
sound like a cannon-shot.

We also saw a great number of flying-fish, although we caught none; and
we noticed that they never flew out of the water except when followed by
their bitter foe the dolphin, from whom they thus endeavoured to escape.
But of all the fish that we saw, none surprised us so much as those
that we used to find in shallow pools after a shower of rain; and this
not on account of their appearance, for they were ordinary-looking and
very small, but on account of their having descended in a shower of
rain! We could account for them in no other way, because the pools in
which we found these fish