Retribution 55 



she should accidentally do it any injury, she slowly 

 milled round and headed seaward, stopping every few 

 yards as if most reluctant to quit the scene of her loss, 

 and manifesting in every movement the acutest grief 

 at her great bereavement. At last, with accelerated 

 speed, she left the reef and made for the open sea, where 

 she speedily rejoined the school she had left and com- 

 municated to them the fact of her great sorrow and its 

 attendant circumstances. I cannot actually say that 

 she received their condolences, but I am absolutely 

 certain that all took solemn warning by her calamity, 

 and as the best preventive against any similar accident 

 to themselves all the prospective mothers determined 

 to avoid the Tonga group as a place of refuge. But 

 as it was a splendid feeding ground, they remained in 

 its immediate vicinity, sometimes cruising among the 

 reefs and between the islands for the shoals of small fish 

 and molluscs abundant there. 



One day the youngest bull of the party was suddenly 

 attacked in the same mysterious manner as the hapless 

 mother had been. But it was where the steep shores of 

 the main island shelved away abruptly into a depth of 

 a thousand fathoms, and that young bull, as soon as he 

 felt the goad, inverted his body and plunged for the 

 depths at a most terrific pace. The men in the boat 

 above, realising too late that their victim was of the 

 wrong sex and, moreover, was in the wrong place for 

 them, just held themselves clear of the hissing line, 

 which in two minutes had run out the whole length of 

 its three hundred fathoms and disappeared with a snap 

 like a stockman's whip. 



The youngster, galled unbearably, and unable to 

 tell what had happened to him, went at top speed as 

 deep as a whale may, that is, to about five hundred 

 fathoms, then essayed to rise to the surface once more. 



