818 
SOUTH SEA 
timbers would have been joined with the savage exult- 
ing shouts of barbarians— thirsting for blood and gain— 
the spear of the savage would have quivered above, and 
the jaws of the cold ocean would have waited for us 
below. 
Shortly after we had escaped this reef, we found the 
centre of the high land of Bougainville to bear east- 
north-east, and we were distant from the shore about 
ten or twelve miles. While off this island on the 22d 
of January 1832, we killed a female whale, which pro- 
duced us sixteen barrels of oil, being the only one we 
had captured since our departure from Japan, 
