Newman and I were armed with harpoons. Newman, following the captain's example, plunged his harpoon into the side of a seal, just as the beast, with the greatest impetus, was sliding down the rock. In attempting to stop its way, his foot slipped, and with the line coiled round his arm, before any of us could go to his assistance, he was dragged off into the boiling waters. He was a first-rate swimmer, but with so huge a sea-monster attached to him, how could he hope to escape. The rock sloped in a different direction to where the boats were, so that they could render him no assistance. I thought of the scene we had just witnessed--the unhappy exile dying alone on the desert island--and I dreaded a similar fate for my friend. With a cry of dismay we looked towards the drowning man. He disappeared among the foaming breakers. Still, but with little hope, we watched the spot. Yes--there was his head! He was swimming free! Bravely he mounted the crest of a roller; it rushed in for the rock; but before he could find his footing, or we could stretch out our arms to help him, he was carried off again among the foaming waves. Meantime old Knowles had climbed up the rock in the face of the sea-lions, whom he was knocking on the head right and left with his club, and signalled the boats to pull round to Newman's assistance. Still, however, with only a couple of hands in each, it would take, I saw, a considerable time before they could reach him, and I resolved to make one attempt to save his life, at the risk, though it might be, of my own. Sticking my harpoon in a crevice of the rock which my eye at that instant fell on, I seized the end of the line, and in spite of the sea-lions, which kept rushing past me, I struck out into the surf as I saw Newman once more approaching. Happily I grasped him by the collar as the sea was once more heaving him back, and the captain and other shipmates coming to our assistance, we were hauled safely up the rocks.