e spouting blood to attract the
sharks, and then--good night!

But while I remained conscious I had not even thought of those monsters;
nor do I believe that a single one of the beasts came near me while I
followed the whale toward the bottom of the sea.

The men in my boat were helpless. They might not aid me in the least.
Nor did they know when I severed the line and started for the surface
again. The weight of the hemp kept it down, although it stopped running
out. Fortunately it uncoiled from my arm, or I would have been held down
there and drowned.

They stared in horror over the sides of the whaleboat, trying to
distinguish any moving object in the depths, and as moment after moment
passed they glanced at each other and shook their heads. I was lost.
They had no hope of ever even seeing me again.

And then it was that the sharp eyes of the old boat-steerer descried my
arm above the surface, not many yards away.

"There! look yon!" he yelled. "Pull, you lubbers!"

They shot the boat ahead and the old man seized me, plunging in his arm
to the shoulder as I sank again. Ben had begun to strip off his
clothing, bound to dive for me if the old man missed. But there was no
need of that, and they hauled me over the side into the boat a deal more
dead than alive.

Indeed, I fought when they brought me back to consciousness. It was
awful suffering, that recovery--that return to the world which I had
every reason to suppose I had said good-bye to. It was a good half hour
before I began to realize where I was, and what was happening to me.

We could not go back to the ship, however. Whale fishing is a grim
business. A struck whale has completely smashed a boat, leaving its crew
struggling in the water, and the other boats have gone on after the
monster and left their companions to paddle about on the wreckage as
best they can until the leviathan is killed.

The other boats from the Scarboro were all busy and our boat was behind.
We had lost our whale and the better part of two lines had gone with the
iron. Before I could do more than lie on the bottom of the boat, under
the men's feet, and gasp, we were pulling after the wounded female
again. She had come up for air and lay sullenly on the surface not half
a mile away.

She was a Tartar; but old Tom got another iron in her, and later Ben
Gibson killed her with two bomb-pointed lances. When the old bark came
down upon us about night she was dead and we hauled her a