We had gone one morning about the southern cape, and were harpooning swordfish and the gigantic sunfish when a commotion a thousand feet away brought shouts of warning from my companions.  We saw two whales, one with a baby at her breast.  The other we took to be the father whale.  Huge black beasts they were.  Upon this mated pair a band of sharks had flung themselves to seize the infant.

There were at least twenty-five sharks in the mad mob, great white monsters thirty feet in length, man-eaters by blood-taste, tigers in disposition.  Though they could not compare with their prey in size or power, they had heads as large as barrels, and mouths that would drag a man through their terrible gaps.  That their hunger was past all bounds was evident, for the whale is not often attacked by such inferior-sized fish.  Storms had raged on the sea for days, and maybe had cheated the sharks of their usual food.

They swam around and around the mountainous pair, darting in and out, evidently with some plan of drawing off the male.  Both the whales struck out incessantly with their mammoth flukes; their great tails, crashing upon the sea-surface, lashed it to mountains of foam.  Our boats tossed as in a gale.

Carried away by the pity and terror of the scene, we shouted threats and curses at the monsters, calling down on them in Marquesan the wrath of the sea-gods.  Frenziedly handling tiller and sails, we circled the battle, impotent to aid the poor woman-beast and her baby.  The sharks harried them as hounds a fox.  Desperately the parents fought, more than one shark sank wounded to the depths and one, turning its white belly to the sun, floated dead upon the waves.  Another was flung high in air by a blow of the mother’s tail.  But it was an uneven contest.  At last we saw the nursling drawn from her breast, and the mother herself sank, still struggling.  She may have risen, of course, far away, but she seemed disabled.

We did not wait about that bloody spot when the sharks had fallen upon their prey, for our canoe was low in the water, and with such a sight to warn us, we did not doubt that the loathly monsters would attack us.

From such a sight it was a relief to turn to the mountains.  Along the steep trails I roamed far with Vanquished Often and Exploding Eggs.  We played at being alone with nature, foregoing in living all that the white man had brought.  I left the house of the chief naked save for a loin-cloth of native make, and I wore no shoes or hat.  Vanquished Often and my valet were attired as I, and thus we shouted “Kaoha!” to the chieftess and started toward adventure.

Seventh Man was dubious about my setting off without some prepared food, popoi or canned fish or biscuits, and without sleeping-mats.  “You ketchee hungery by an’ soon,” he protested.  “No got Gold Bed in mountains.”

Vanquished Often laughed merrily, and the chief looked like a father whose child has thrown a stone at the bogie-man.  I rubbed his nose with mine in farewell, and we began our journey, barehanded as Crusoe, yet more fortunate than he since we were in the best of company and I had the comforting knowledge that Marquesan youth would not go hungry or permit me to do so.