who stood at the kitchen window, announced that the whale was stranded on the beach of the island.
Herbert and Gideon Spilett, who were just about to set out hunting, left their guns, Pencroft threw down his ax, and Harding and Neb joining their companions, all rushed towards the scene of action.
The stranding had taken place on the beach of Flotsam Point, three miles from Granite House, and at high tide. It was therefore probable that the cetacean would not be able to extricate itself easily. Yet they hastened so as to cut off its retreat if necessary. They ran with pick-axes and iron-tipped poles in their hands, passed over the Mercy bridge, and in less than twenty minutes were close to the enormous animal, above which flocks of birds already hovered.
"What a monster!" cried Neb.
The exclamation was natural, for it was a southern whale, eighty feet long, a giant of the species, probably weighing a hundred and fifty thousand pounds!
The monster did not move, nor attempt by struggling to regain the water whilst the tide was still high. It was dead, and a harpoon was sticking out of its left side.
"There are whalers in these quarters, then?" said Gideon Spilett directly.
"Oh, Mr. Spilett, that doesn't prove anything!" replied Pencroft. "Whales have been known to go thousands of miles with a harpoon in the side, and this one might even have been struck in the north of the Atlantic and come to die in the south of the Pacific, and it would be nothing astonishing."
Pencroft, having torn the harpoon from the animal's side, read the inscription on it: "Maria Stella, Vineyard."
"A vessel from the Vineyard! A ship from my country!" he cried. "The Maria Stella! A fine whaler, 'pon my word; I know her well! Oh, my friends, a vessel from the Vineyard!—a whaler from the Vineyard!" And the sailor brandishing the harpoon, repeated with emotion the name which he loved so well—the name of his birthplace.
As it could not be expected that the Maria Stella would come to reclaim the animal harpooned by her, they resolved to begin cutting it up before decomposition should commence. The birds, who had watched this rich prey for
