10 
MADAGASGAR. 
copal rifle, all ready for the fray, was softly but 
firmly lowered; and as the huge monsters, some 
fifty or more, having gone under for a moment, 
presumably to hold a council of war on seeing 
the approach of the militant expedition, now rose 
up in their strength to the surface with a unity 
of purpose and a series of snorts and violent 
plungings, which lashed the water on all sides 
of us with mountains of foam, and threatened 
the tiny boat with instant destruction, we, as 
others have done before us, thought discretion 
the highest form of valour, and beat a hasty 
retreat from the presence of the overwhelming 
foe, and retired slowly and by the nearest route 
to our ark of safety, which awaited us in the dis¬ 
tance, looking verily “like a painted ship upon 
a painted ocean.” We had unwittingly disturbed 
a school of blackfish, as they are called popularly 
by seamen—huge, coaly-skinned, full-eyed mon¬ 
sters, who, in their playfulness, would have made 
short work of the whole bench of bishops. As it 
was, we luckily escaped any damage—although 
the force with which these creatures can strike is 
only equalled by that of the whale itself, to which 
species they naturally belong. 
We were followed at Trinidad in a few days 
by the yacht of the Earl of Crawford and Bal- 
carres, then Lord Lindsay. His lordship, in the 
pursuit of his favourite science, had organised an 
