We slid a tree down under the water, and then another, and so on,
till it was a messy-looking channel, a sort of log jam, with roots
and palm-tree tops mixed in, which I thought the tide would float
out, and it did afterward, some of it.
Then we went back to where Kamelillo was cooking, squatted on the
shore with his bare back turned to the water. He took no interest in
Liebchen. He was making a kind of paste of ground roots, called
"poi," which wasn't bad, if you rolled a fish in it, and baked it on
the coals, and thought about something else. But at that time
Liebchen came round the north shore in a roar of foam, bringing her
flukes down now and then with a slap to make the harbour ache, and
she slapped near a barrel of water over Kamelillo and his fire and
his poi. Kamelillo says:
"Why for? She not my whale. You keep her out a my suppa. Why for?"
Kreps was disgusted because Kamelillo didn't like Liebchen. He went
and stood on the bank, in the interest of science, and studied the
habits of the cetacean, but he got no results. She had no habits, to
speak uprightly, only notions. They weren't any use to science.
Sometimes she'd flutter with her fins, and twitter her flukes, and
sidle off like she was bashful, and then she'd come swooping around
enough to make the harbour sizzle, and stick her nose in the bottom
and her tail in the air, trembling with her emotions, and then she'd
come up and smile at you a rod each way.
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