Never once did this thought leave my mind.

I remembered, too, with a pang, that I had now no tools with which to build another; and to venture out into the open sea on a catamaran, probably for weeks, simply meant courting certain destruction.

I was a greater prisoner than ever.
My harpoon had evidently inflicted a mortal wound on the calf whale, because as we looked we saw it lying exhausted on the surface of the water, and being gradually swept nearer and nearer the shore by the swift- flowing tide.

The mother refused to leave her little one however, and still continued to wheel round it continuously, even when it had reached dangerously shallow water.
The result was that when the tide turned, both the mother and her calf were left stranded high and dry on the beach, to the unbounded delight and amazement of the natives, who swarmed round the leviathans, and set up such a terrific uproar, that I verily believe they frightened the mother to death.

In her dying struggle she lashed the water into a perfect fury with her tail, and even made attempts to lift herself bodily up.