h, here it is!"

The poor man's face grew paler and paler as he read the following
words:--

"Married at Liverpool, on the 5th inst, by the Reverend Charles Manson,
Edward Gordon, Esquire, to Susan, youngest daughter of Admiral Croft--"

A perfect roar of laughter drowned the remainder of the sentence.

"Well done, Bill Blunt--Mister Blunt, we'll have to call him hereafter,"
said Tom, with a grim smile; "I had no notion you thought so much o'
yourself as to aim at an admiral's daughter."

"All right, my hearties, chaff away!" said Bill, fetching a deep sigh of
relief, while a broad grin played on his weather-beaten visage.
"There's _two_ Susan Crofts, that's all; but I wouldn't give _my_ Susan
for all the Admirals' daughters that ever walked in shoe-leather."

"Hallo! here come the Yankees," cried the captain, coming on deck at
that moment.

Our newspapers were thrown down at once, and we prepared to receive our
guests, who, we could see, had just put off from their ship in two
boats. But before they had come within a mile of us, their attention,
as well as ours, was riveted on a most extraordinary sight.

Not more than a hundred yards ahead of our ship, a whale came suddenly
to the surface of the water, seeming, by its wild motions, to be in a
state of terror. It continued for some time to struggle, and lash the
whole sea around it into a white foam.

At once the boats were lowered from both ships, and we went after this
fish, but his motions were so violent, that we found it utterly
impossible to get near enough to throw a harpoon. When we had
approached somewhat closely, we discovered that it had been attacked by
a killer fish, which was fully twenty feet long, and stuck to it like a
leech. The monster's struggles were made in trying to shake itself free
of this tremendous enemy, but it could not accomplish this. The killer
held him by the under jaw, and hung on there, while the whale threw
himself out of the water in his agony, with his great mouth open like a
huge cavern, and the blood flowing so fast from the wound that the sea
was dyed for a long distance round. The killer fought like a bulldog.
It held on until the whale was exhausted, but they passed away from us
in such a confused struggle, that a harpoon could not be fixed for an
hour after we first saw them. On this being done, the killer let go,
and the whale, being already half dead, was soon killed.

The Yankee boats were the first to co