longside--the
first fish to be grappled to. But the other boats brought in three more.
We were having great luck and for two more days worked like Trojans.

But the school of cachelots we had followed had disappeared then. The
Scarboro sailed many a league farther south--and toward the Horn--before
we raised a single whale. We were 40 degrees south then--below the de la
Plata. I feared that the old bark would not put in at Buenos Ayres and
there would be no chance of my returning home by steamship.

Not that I was yet tired of my work and the life we led. No, indeed. But
I was anxious to hear from home, and I believed letters must be waiting
me there at Buenos Ayres--and money, too.

No use to think of touching port, however, when the weather was so fine
and whales were so infrequently met with. The whole crew had begun to
get anxious. Mr. Robbins grumbled that he didn't see the use of roaming
about the South Atlantic, anyway. It was the Pacific that whales
frequented.

"Why the last time I sailed in a windjammer," declared the mate, "we
were four weeks getting around the Horn from Santiago, and there wasn't
a day went over our heads that we didn't see plenty of whales. The
minute we got onto this side of Fuego we never saw a fin--and we ran to
Bahia. Wouldn't have known there ever was a whale in this darned old
ocean."

But the beginning of the cruise had been fortunate, and the whales had
not entirely forsaken the Atlantic despite the grumbling of the crew. We
killed two small humpedbacks within the week and then came upon sperms
again. At daybreak the lookout hailed and the sea seemed fairly alive
with them.

We tumbled out and, with only a pannikin of coffee in our stomachs, and
a cold bite in our fists, made off in the boats for the royal game. Ben
Gibson's boat had a good tally so far and we were not going to let the
others beat us much. We had our pick of half a dozen sperms and we took
after a bull that seemed promising.

We struck on and the wounded whale ran a little way in fright, trying
its best to shake out the harpoon. Finding this impossible, despite its
porpoise-like gambols, the whale sounded; then occurred one of the
strangest happenings that can be imagined. The bull went down, and we
paid out a goodly portion of line. Finally the line stopped running, but
the whale did not rise.

"What do you know about this, Tom?" demanded the young second mate.
"That critter's gone to sleep down there, ha