The first
we saw was tons of her gambolling around in the water. She was a
medium-sized whale, and might have been forty feet in length, but I
never was in the whaling business, and Liebchen was the only one I
ever got real acquainted with. I've heard it's common for them to be
stranded on shallow shores, and get off again if let alone. The harbour
may have been Liebchen's boudoir for aught I know. Maybe she'd come
there before. She surely knew how to get out if let alone. After an
hour or so she was over by the entrance trying to leave. She seemed
to be in trouble, and then we saw the tide had gone out, and left the
channel too shallow to heave over.
When Kreps understood that she was penned in, he acted outrageous,
and pranced like a red rubber balloon.
"Gieb mir das axe! Ich will de habits of de cetacean studieren!" he
says.
He ran away through the woods around the north shore, and I ran
after, to see him study the habits of the cetacean. Liebchen had
sidled off and was rolling about in the middle of the harbour when we
came to the bluffs, where the wine-palms and cocoanut trees leaned
over and the channel was narrow. Kreps fell to chopping the landward
roots, and I saw he wanted to block the channel.
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