Page:Castaway on the Auckland Isles (IA castawayonauckla01musg).pdf/34

18 of the reef, which is round and composed of sharp loose rocks; it is about a cable's length from the shore, and connected with it. There is barely a passage for a boat, and very shallow water outside of the distance of a cable and a half, where the centre drops suddenly into eight fathoms, close to the edge, and deepens fast from that outwards. But I was not particular about sounding far from it, as it came on to rain, and we wanted seal, as our fresh provisions had been out for two or three days; so we landed on the island, and found three mobs of seals asleep. There were from 30 to 40 in each mob, and there were a great many very young calves amongst them. These we wanted to get without killing the old ones. I had only two men with me; so we took our clubs and each of us took a mob, and I suppose in ten seconds we had knocked down ten calves from two to three months old, and one two-year-old seal. We had to go right in amongst them, and, although they woke up, we were so quick about the job that they stared at us in confusion for a moment, and then by a simultaneous movement rushed towards the water. We could have got more, but one of the men was at this moment attacked by the only remaining one, which was a tremendous large bull—the largest tiger seal I have seen (they were all tigers), and he fought like a tiger. We immediately rushed to the rescue; the poor fellow was obliged to take to a tree till we came up, when all three set on to the seal, and he showed fight bravely. It was as long as ten minutes before we proved ourselves conquerors: we should have been quite willing to get out of his way, but he would not give us a chance. We were in a thick bush, so that he had a decided advantage. However, we left him, as he was too big for us to attend to when we had so many little ones to look after. This was the greatest piece of excitement I have had for a long time. We got our booty into the boat, which was quite a load for her, and returned to the camp. We had also a lot of widgeons, which I had shot before landing. I had left my