," Daughtry grinned, chiefly for the purpose of keeping his
comrades unafraid.

Barely had they rowed a dozen strokes, when an exclamation from Big John
led them to follow his gaze to the schooners forecastle-head, where the
forecastle cat flashed across in pursuit of a big rat. Other rats they
saw, evidently driven out of their lairs by the rising water.

"We just can't leave that cat behind," Daughtry soliloquized in
suggestive tones.

"Certainly not," the Ancient Mariner responded swinging his weight on the
steering-sweep and heading the boat back.

Twice the whale gently rolled them in the course of its leisurely
circling, ere they bent to their oars again and pulled away. Of them the
whale seemed to take no notice. It was from the huge thing, the
schooner, that death had been wreaked upon her calf; and it was upon the
schooner that she vented the wrath of her grief.

Even as they pulled away, the whale turned and headed across the ocean.
At a half-mile distance she curved about and charged back.

"With all that water in her, the schooner'll have a real kick-back in her
when she's hit," Daughtry said. "Lordy me, rest on your oars an' watch."

Delivered squarely amidships, it was the hardest blow the _Mary Turner_
had received. Stays and splinters of rail flew in the air as she rolled
so far over as to expose half her copper wet-glistening in the sun. As
she righted sluggishly, the mainmast swayed drunkenly in the air but did
not fall.

"A knock-out!" Daughtry cried, at sight of the whale flurrying the water
with aimless, gigantic splashings. "It must a-smashed both of 'em."

"Schooner he finish close up altogether," Kwaque observed, as the _Mary
Turner's_ rail disappeared.

Swiftly she sank, and no more than a matter of moments was it when the
stump of her mainmast was gone. Remained only the whale, floating and
floundering, on the surface of the sea.

"It's nothing to brag about," Daughtry delivered himself of the _Mary
Turner's_ epitaph. "Nobody'd believe us. A stout little craft like that
sunk, deliberately sunk, by an old cow-whale! No, sir. I never believed
that old moss-back in Honolulu, when he claimed he was a survivor of the
sinkin' of the _Essex_, an' no more will anybody believe me."

"The pretty schooner, the pretty clever craft," mourned the Ancient
Mariner. "Never were there more dainty and lovable topmasts on a three-
masted schooner, and never was there a three-masted schoon