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Near them is usually some fenced-in cultivation, and possibly a rough-grassed clearing, on which may be a few cattle or horses. There are always pigs and dogs visible, and brown naked children disporting themselves on the beach, where canoes are drawn up, fishing nets spread out, and a scaffolding erected to dry shark-meat upon.
Let's down wi' them flitches o' the shark-meat: for it's them that's driftin' us along. We'll take a spell at the oars, and afore daylight we may get out o' hearin' o' the voices, and out of sight o' them as has been utterin' o' them."
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.
As they were not yet quite satisfied with the supply of broiled shark-meat, they had resolved to take a fresh spell at roasting on the morrow; and in order that the wick should not be idly wasted, they had "doused the glim" before retiring to rest. They had extinguished the flame in a somewhat original fashion, by pouring upon it a portion of the liquid spermaceti taken out of the case.
One such dolphin I landed on the Snark measured four feet and seven inches. Hermann caught dolphins more prosaically. A hand-line and a chunk of shark-meat were all he needed. His hand-line was very thick, but on more than one occasion it parted and lost the fish. One day a dolphin got away with a lure of Hermann's manufacture, to which were lashed four O'Shaughnessy hooks.
Then would come a gorge on a grand scale, followed by business the cutting into strips and drying of the shark-meat for winter food. In the forests they found birds, and, not having the bow-and-arrow, made shift to snare and spear them ingeniously.
After that, with jealously guarded shark-meat for bait, they managed on occasion to catch more sharks. But water remained their direst need. Mauriri prayed to the Goat God for rain. Taute prayed to the Missionary God, and his two fellow islanders, backsliding, invoked the deities of their old heathen days. Grief grinned and considered.
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