"
"Oh, dear!" said Lucy; "then I don't think I like it now; it is too
terrible. Pray go on, Mr.--Mr.--"
"Well, Miss Fountain, when a novice like me saw this black serpent
twisting and twirling, and smoking and hissing in and out among us, I
remembered the skipper's words, and I hailed Jack--it was he had laid
the line--he was in the bow.
"'Jack,' said I.
"'Hallo!" said he.
"'For God's sake, are there any hitches in the line?' said I.
"'Not as I _knows_ on,' says he, much cooler than you sit there;
and that is a sailor all over. Well, she towed us about a mile, and
then she was blown, and we hauled up on the line, and came up with
her, and drove lances into her, till she spouted blood instead of salt
water, and went into her flurry, and rolled suddenly over our way
dead, and was within a foot of smashing us to atoms; but if she had it
would only have been an accident, for she was past malice, poor thing.
Then we took possession, planted our flagstaff in her spouting-hole,
you know, and pulled back to the ship, and she came down and anchored
to the whale, and then, for the first time, I saw the blubber stripped
off a whale and hoisted by tackles into the ship's hold, which is as
curious as any part of the business, but a dirtyish job, and not fit
for the present company, and I dare say that is enough about whales."
"No! no! no!"
"Well, then, shall I tell you how one old whale knocked our boat clean
into the air, bottom uppermost, and how we swam round her and managed
to right her?"
"And went back to the ship and had your tea in bed and your clothes
dried?"
"No, Eve," replied David, with the utmost simplicity; "we got in and
to work again, and killed the whale in less than half an hour, and
planted our flag on her, and away after another.
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