together. Jeff made no sound, and it was too dark to see
his face. Suddenly the object rushed at us. There was no noise of
footsteps--only a muffled sound and a faint hissing. I stood still,
unable to move. So did Jeff. I felt the hair of my head rising.
Stumps gasped again--then turned and fled. The creature, whatever it
was, brushed past us with a hideous laugh. I guessed at once that it
was Jim Slagg, but evidently Stumps didn't, for he uttered an awful yell
that would have roused the whole ship if she had been of an ordinary
size; at the same moment he tripped and fell on the thing that had upset
me, and the ghost, leaping over him, vanished from our sight.

"To my surprise, on returning to our cabin, we found Slagg as we had
left him, with both hands on his forehead poring over his book. I was
almost as much surprised to see Jeff sit down and laugh heartily.--Now,
what _do_ you think it could have been?"

"It was Slagg, of course," answered the sporting electrician.

"Yes, but what causes the tapping?"

"Oh, that is no doubt some little trifle--a chip of wood, or bit of wire
left hanging loose, which shakes about when the ship heaves."

A sudden tramping of feet overhead brought this ghostly discussion to an
abrupt close, and caused every man in the saloon to rush on deck with a
terrible feeling in his heart that something had gone wrong.

"Not broken?" asked an electrician with a pale face on reaching the
deck.

"Oh no, sir," replied an engineer, with an anxious look, "not quite so
bad as that, but a whale has taken a fancy to inspect us, and he is
almost _too_ attentive."

So it was. A large Greenland whale was playing about the big ship,
apparently under the impression that she was a giant of his own species,
and it had passed perilously close to the cable.

A second time it came up, rolling high above the waves. It went close
past the stern--rose again and dived with a gentle flop of its great
tail, which, if it had touched the cable, would have cut it like a
thread. At that trying moment, as they saw its huge back glittering in
the moonlight, the hearts of the helpless spectators appeared absolutely
to stand still. When the monster dived its side even touched the cable,
but did not damage it. Being apparently satisfied by that time that the
ship was not a friend, the whale finally disappeared in the depths of
its ocean home.

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