As he sat thus, supporting his swollen head upon his skeleton hands, Renton saw something astern, moving slowly after the boat—something that he knew was waiting and following for the awful deed to be done, so that it too might share in the dreadful feast.
Raising his bony arm, he pointed towards the moving fin. To him a shark meant no added horror or danger to their position, but possibly deliverance. "Boston Ned" and the other man first looked at the coming shark, and then with sunken eyes again turned to Renton. Voices none of them had, and the lad's parched tongue could not articulate, but with signs and lip movements he tried to make the other two men understand.
No shark hook had they; nor, if they had had one, had they anything with which to bait it. But Renton, crawling aft, picked up the harpoon, placed it in "Boston Ned's" hands, and motioned to him to stand by. Then with eager, trembling hands he stripped from his legs the shreds of trousers which remained on them, and, sitting upon the gunwale of the boat, hung one limb over and let it trail in the water.
Three times the shark came up, and thrice Ned prepared to strike, but each time the grim ranger of the seas turned aside as it caught sight of the waiting figure with weapon poised above. But at last hunger prevailed, and, swimming slowly up till within a few yards of the boat, it made a sudden rush for the human bait, missed it, and the harpoon, deftly darted by the old ex-whaler, clove through its tough skin and buried itself deep into its body between the shoulders.
It took the worn-out, exhausted men a long time to haul alongside and despatch the struggling monster, which, says Renton, was ten feet in length.
Then followed shark's flesh and shark's blood, some of the former, after the first raw meal, being cooked on a fire made of the biscuit barge upon a wet blanket spread in the bottom of the boat. The hot weather, however, soon turned the remaining portion putrid, but two or three days later came God's blessed rain, and gave them hope and life again. They managed to save a considerable quantity of water, and, though the shark's flesh was in a horrible condition, they continued to feed upon it until the thirty-fifth day.
On this day they saw land, high and well wooded; but now the trade-wind failed them, and for the following two days the unfortunate men contended with baffling light airs, calms, and strong currents. At last they got within a short distance of the shore, and sought for a landing-place through the surrounding surf.
Suddenly four or five canoes darted out from the shore. They were filled with armed savages, whose aspect and demeanour warned old Ned that he and his comrades were among cannibals. Sweeping alongside the boat, the savages seized the white men, who were all too feeble to resist, or even move, put them into their canoes, and conveyed them on shore, fed them, and treated them with much apparent kindness. Crowds of natives from that part of the island—which was Malayta, one of the Solomon Group—came to look at them, and one man, a chief, took a fancy to Renton, and claimed him as his own especial property.
Renton never saw the rest of his companions again, for they were removed to the interior of the Island—probably sold to some of the bush tribes, the "man-a-bush," as the coastal natives called them. Their fate is not difficult to guess, for the people of Malayta were then, as they are now, cannibals.
On August 7, 1875, the Queensland labour recruiting schooner Bobtail Nag was cruising off the island, trading for yams, and her captain heard from some natives who came alongside that there was a white man living ashore in a village about ten miles distant. The skipper of the Bobtail Nag at once offered to pay a handsome price if the man was brought on board, and at the cost of several dozen Birmingham steel axes and some tobacco poor Renton's release was effected. He told his rescuers that the people among whom he had lived had taken a great fancy to him, and had treated him with great kindness.