Читать книгу A Sack of Shakings онлайн

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In stately march the new family travelled southward out of the Red Sea, along the Somali Coast, past the frowning cliffs of Sokotra, and crossing the Arabian Sea, skirted at their ease the pleasant Malabar littoral. Unerring instinct guided them across the Indian Ocean and through the Sunda Straits, until amid the intricacies of Celebes they ended their journey for a season. Here, with richest food in overflowing abundance, among undisturbed reef-beds swept by constantly changing currents, where they might chafe their irritated skins clean from the many parasites they had accumulated during their long Red Sea sojourn, they remained for several seasons. Then, suddenly, as calamities usually come, they were attacked by a whaler as they were calmly coasting along Timor. But never till their dying day did those whale-fishers forget that fight. True, they secured two half-grown cows, but at what a cost to themselves! For the young leader, now in the full flush of vigorous life, seemed not only to have inherited the fighting instincts of his ancestors, but also to possess a fund of wily ferocity that made him a truly terrible foe. No sooner did he feel the first keen thrust of the harpoon than, instead of expending his strength for naught by a series of aimless flounderings, he rolled his huge bulk swiftly towards his aggressors, who were busily engaged in clearing their boat of the hampering sail, and perforce helpless for a time. Right down upon them came the writhing mass of living flesh, overwhelming them as completely as if they had suddenly fallen under Niagara. From out of that roaring vortex only two of the six men forming the boat’s crew emerged alive, poor fragments of humanity tossing like chips upon the tormented sea. Then changing his tactics, the triumphant cachalot glided stealthily about just beneath the surface, feeling with his sensitive flukes for anything still remaining afloat upon which to wreak his newly aroused thirst for vengeance. As often as he touched a floating portion of the shattered boat, up flew his mighty flukes in a moment, and, with a reflex blow that would have stove in the side of a ship, he smote it into still smaller splinters. This attention to his first set of enemies saved the other boats from destruction, for they, using all expedition, managed to despatch the two cows they had harpooned, and when they returned to the scene of disaster, the bull, unable to find anything more to destroy, had departed with the remnant of his family, and they saw him no more. Gloomily they traversed the battle-field until they found the two exhausted survivors just feebly clinging to a couple of oars, and with them mournfully regained their ship.