ely of
the water as a moment before I had breathed of the air! A weight was
lifted from my brain, which had before been crushing it, and my
temples grew suddenly cool. A spiracle had developed at the apex of my
cranium, and I exuded water through a cavity or 'blow-hole' in the top
of my head, like the cetacea around me!"

The naturalist here paused and ran his hand through his hair. The
shining something among his gray locks revealed itself as a plate of
silver, circular in shape, covering what had evidently been an opening
in the skull. He looked less like a man than ever, and when,
consulting a glutinous old chronometer, like a jellyfish, he found
that his hour was passing, he begged so earnestly to be allowed to
finish his "Introduction," that I gave him leave. A boy coming in with
copy so frightened him, however, that I thought he was going to turn
upon his stomach, and swim away through the window.

"I became sensible directly of three organic changes: my heels clave
together, my feet flattened, and my toes turned out, like a caudal
fin; my integument grew thick and hard, and my blood thin and chill.
But these conditions being novel to me, and my fears only equalled by
my wonder as yet, I was paralyzed, and continued to sink. I had
descended about one hundred fathoms, and was experiencing a strange
oppression, as of the forcing together of my bones, when I heard a
sonorous voice close below me say! 'If you go any deeper, you will
sustain a pressure of twenty atmospheres, and may not get back at
all.'"

I looked beneath, and to my horror a huge whale was coming upward with
extended jaws. His half-human eyes were turned benignantly upon me;
but he was evidently in pain, and from a point in his back, where a
broken harpoon still remained, gouts of blood curdled upward, coloring
the water. His vocal power lay in his spiracle, and he said again:

"'I should have been asphyxiated in five minutes.'

"'Who is it that speaks?' I faltered. 'Leviathan, king of the sea, be
merciful!'

"'I am called _New England Tom_ by the creatures of the upper
element,' answered the whale, 'although falsely thought to be of the
family of the Spermaceti; but though my exploits have recommended me
to my species, I am not equal to the high title you have given me.
_That_ is possessed by you and our sovereign Jonah only!'

"The conviction rushed upon me that I had, indeed, 'dominion over the
fish'!

"'I have suffered this wound for yo