r beam."

"Can you see the boat?" cried Lopez.

"No, sir," was the reply after a few seconds silence. "Can't see her
anywhere."

"Look on the other side of the whale, you bat!" growled the skipper.

"She's not there, sir," was the reply.

"Lower away your boats, Mr. Bock and Mr. Lopez," said Keller in more
gracious tones to the third and first officers; "the second mate can't
be far away, but why in thunder he didn't hang on to the whale last
night I don't know. Take something to eat with you. You will have to tow
that whale alongside--this calm is going to last all day."

Five minutes later the two boats pushed off, and then, as they sped over
the glassy surface of the ocean and the huge carcass of the whale was
more clearly revealed, Bock called out to his superior officer that he
could see a whift {*} on it.

* A wooden pole with a small pennon; used by whalers' boats
as a signal to the ship.

Lopez nodded, but said nothing.

They pulled up alongside, and the mate's boatsteerer stepped out on to
the body of Leviathan and pulled out the whift pole, which was firmly
embedded in the blubber.

"There's a letter tied round the pole, sir," he said to his officer, as
he got back to the boat again and passed the whift aft.

The "letter" had been carefully wrapped in a strip of oilskin, and then
tied around the whift pole by a piece of sail twine. It was a sheet of
soiled paper with a few pencilled lines written on it. Lopez read it:--

"For the information of Ethan Keller, Haser: This whale was
struck, for the sake of his shipmates' lays, by Randall
Cheyne, the 'yaller-hided Samoan,' who has struck more
whales than old Haser Keller ever saw. If Haser Keller wants
us he will find us at Savage Island, where we shall be ready
for him.

(Signed) "R. Cheyne, Boatsteerer, "Casilda."

"Where is Mr. Frewen, sir?" inquired the boatsteerer anxiously.

"Gone for a picnic," replied the mate laconically. "Now, look lively,
my lads. We've got to tow this fish to the ship and 'cut in' before the
sharks save us the trouble."

CHAPTER II

The quarrel between Keller, a rough, blasphemous-mouthed, and
violent-tempered man, and his second officer had arisen over a very
simple matter.

Frewen, one of the six sons of a struggling New Hampshire farmer, had
received a better education than his brothers, for he was intended for
the navy. But at sixteen years of age he realise