with the stroke of fin and fluke as the sharks outflanked and harried the whale.

In a steady succession the sharks would shoot high out of the water in a graceful, deadly curve and, as they fell back, suddenly stiffen in a whip-lash bend that instantly straightened at the moment of impact, sending a flying mass of spray like that when a solid shot ricochets in gun practice. A few such blows and even a bulky, blubber-coated whale would feel it. Sometimes a shark would strike fair, though more often he would waste his energy on the empty water as the whale dove.

But the steadiness of the battering attack, sometimes all three sharks in the air as though by a signal, sometimes a steady procession pouring up from the sea in a wicked arc as regular as a clock’s ticking, and sometimes the frantic whirling of the whale showed the submarine strategists at work, while only a single shark shot up in a well-aimed, whip-lash stroke. In desperation the whale would stand on its head and beat the air in terrific blows with its flukes while the sharks would merely wait till the flurry was over and then renew their steady, wearing, pounding battle.

Off at one side of the circle of beaten foam was a little dark patch that paddled nervously about and that we had overlooked—a whale-calf. And now it was apparent why the fight was fought in the diameter of a ship’s length; always the bulk of the grim old mother was between the attack and her clumsy baby; there was the reason why she did not make a running fight of it that would have given her a more even break—for the speed of a squadron is that of its slowest ship. All the advantage lay with the sharks; it was easy to see they were wearing the whale down. Less often she stood on her head to batter the foam hopefully with her ponderous flukes; the sharks redoubled their efforts until they curved in a steady, leaping line.

Along the rail of the Mapocho the passengers, deck and cabin, cheered the battle as their tense sympathies dictated or drew whistling breaths as some crashing whip-lash went home. The deep sapphire of the sea rippling under the brisk evening breeze, the turquoise heaven that swept down to the horizon softly shifting against the sapphire contrast to a mystery of fragile green, the field of battle boiling and eddying in the mellow orange glow of the long rays of the setting sun and bursting into masses of iridescent spray made a noble setting worthy of the cause, and in it eighty tons of mother-love and devotion measuring itself in horse-power and foot-tons was slowly drooping under the hail from a slim, glittering, iridescent arc.

Smaller grew the fight in the distance—a mile—a mile and a half—then two-thirds of the whale’s bulk shot clear of the surface and she fell back heavily. Once more the head went down and the flukes raised themselves, lashing the air in frantic desperation. The curving, confident line of sharks shot upward in a graceful curve, but this time, overconfident, they had miscalculated. The great tail caught one shark and he hurtled through the flying spray with a broken back; the flukes crashed down on a second as he struck the water. Once only the surviving shark leaped and missed. Alone he could do no more; the whale in one lucky stroke had won. Through the glasses we could make out its low mass slowly swimming off, every now and then spouting a feather of spray from her blow-hole as though saluting her own victorious progress with a steam-whistle.

Five days out from Panama and we awoke to find the Mapocho swinging to her anchor in the Guayas River and awaiting the pleasure of the port-doctor. On one side a distant shore loomed through the heated, humid haze, on the other a sluggish tide-water creek disappeared in the jungle of the bank an easy rifle-shot away. A ramshackle church with a huge crucifix showed at one side of the port-doctor’s house and here and there a few houses and thatched roofs appeared above a stretch of white beach. A few black pigs wandered about, showing the only signs of life. Somewhere beyond this dismal outpost was Guayaquil. Already in the captain’s quarters was a conference of the skipper, the young Chilean ship’s doctor fresh from school and on his first trip, and the port doctor.

Presently they emerged, the captain feebly expostulating. We were to be held “under observation” for forty-eight hours as yellow fever and bubonic suspects. That Guayaquil should quarantine against anything is—at the least to an ordinary sense of humor—funny, for Guayaquil has never seen the time that it was likely to catch anything it did not already have, except a clean bill of health.

We learned for the first time that there were three Chileans abroad who were being returned to Chile by their consul. They were anemic, destitute and sick with malarial fever; although the whole coast was in a panic over yellow fever and the bubonic, yet this time had been chosen to ship them home some two thousand miles to a Chilean hospital! They had been stowed between decks and the young ship’s doctor had made the mistake of attempting to gloss over their existence, or at any rate to split the difference between truth and expediency, and had succeeded only in exciting a peevish suspicion in a marooned gentleman who had some power. He did not even look at the cases—quarantine forty-eight hours, and then he would return with advices from the government.

A few of us went down to take a look at the Chilenos whose appearance had held us up. There was no formal hospital on board so a little compartment had been hastily thrown up between decks. It was built of the loose planks on which the cattle stand during the voyage; it was closed on all four sides, windowless, and with but a single opening for a doorway curtained by a filthy piece of canvas. This black hole, reeking with filth, was the hospital; a couple of figures lay on the floor and looked up dully at the sudden flare of a match while, from an open cargo port, the third was tottering, a shrunken wreck with the ghastly teeth of a skull and socketed eyes.

At noon the purser presented each first cabin passenger with a little bill for half a sovereign—two dollars and a half, gold—which amount we were charged for as demurrage every day in any quarantine. The deck steerage paid a shilling, gold, each day.