ip. He was going at nearly the same rate with the
ship--about three miles an hour; and the men, who were good judges of
the size of whales, thought that it could not have been less than
eighty-five feet long. All at once he ran against the ship, striking
her bows, and causing her to tremble like a leaf. The whale
immediately dived and passed under the ship, and grazed her keel in
doing so. This evidently hurt his back, for he suddenly rose to the
surface about fifty yards off, and commenced lashing the sea with his
tail and fins as if suffering great agony. It was truly an awful sight
to behold that great monster lashing the sea into foam at so short a
distance.

In a short time he seemed to recover, and started off at great speed to
windward. Meanwhile the men discovered that the blow received by the
ship had done her so much damage, that she began to fill and settle
down at the bows; so they rigged the pumps as quickly as possible.
While working them one of the men cried out:

"God have mercy! he comes again!"

This was too true. The whale had turned, and was now bearing down on
them at full speed, leaving a white track of foam behind him. Rushing
at the ship like a battering-ram, he hit her fair on the weather bow
and stove it in, after which he dived and disappeared. The horrified
men took to their boats at once, and in _ten minutes_ the ship went
down.

The condition of the men thus left in three open boats far out upon the
sea, without provisions or shelter, was terrible indeed. Some of them
perished, and the rest, after suffering the severest hardships, reached
a low island called Ducies on the 20th of December. It was a mere
sand-bank, which supplied them only with water and sea-fowl. Still
even this was a mercy, for which they had reason to thank God; for in
cases of this kind one of the evils that seamen have most cause to
dread is the want of water.

Three of the men resolved to remain on this sand-bank, for dreary and
uninhabited though it was, they preferred to take their chance of being
picked up by a passing ship rather than run the risks of crossing the
wide ocean in open boats, so their companions bade them a sorrowful
farewell, and left them. But this island is far out of the usual track
of ships. The poor fellows have never since been heard of.

It was the 27th of December when the three boats left the sand-bank
with the remainder of the men, and began a voyage of two thousand
mi