ate, as we went flying down to
leeward, and almost ran over the hen-coop, to which a human form was
seen to be clinging with the tenacity of a drowning man. We had swept
down so quickly that we shot past it. In an agony of fear lest my
friend should be again lost in the darkness, I leaped up and sprang into
the sea. Tom Lokins, however, had noticed what I was about; he seized
me by the collar of my jacket, just as I reached the water, and held me
with a grip like a vice till one of the men came to his assistance, and
dragged me back into the boat. In a few moments more we reached the
hen-coop, and Fred was saved!

He was half dead with cold and exhaustion, poor fellow, but in a few
minutes he began to recover, and before we reached the ship he could
speak. His first words were to thank God for his deliverance. Then he
added--

"And, thanks to the man that flung that light overboard. I should have
gone down but for that. It showed me where the hen-coop was."

I cannot describe the feeling of joy that filled my heart when he said
this.

"Ay, who wos it that throw'd that fire overboard?" inquired one of the
men.

"Don't know," replied another, "I think it wos the cap'n."

"You'll find that out when we get aboard," cried the mate; "pull away,
lads."

In five minutes Fred Borders was passed up the side and taken down
below. In two minutes more we had him stripped naked, rubbed dry,
wrapped in hot blankets, and set down on one of the lockers, with a hot
brick at his feet.

CHAPTER SIX.

THE WHALE--FIGHTING BULLS, ETCETERA.

As the reader may, perhaps, have been asking a few questions about the
whale in his own mind, I shall try to answer them, by telling a few
things concerning that creature which, I think, are worth knowing.

In the first place, the whale is not a fish! I have applied that name
to it, no doubt, because it is the custom to do so; but there are great
differences between the whales and the fishes. The mere fact that the
whale lives in water is not sufficient to prove it to be a fish. The
frog lives very much in water--he is born in the water, and, when very
young, he lives in it altogether--would die, in fact, if he were taken
out of it; yet a frog is not a fish.

The following are some of the differences existing between a whale and a
fish:--

The whale is a warm-blooded animal; the fish is cold-blooded. The whale
brings forth its young alive; while most fishes lay eggs or sp