Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither ship nor boat to be seen.

“Give way, men,” whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the sheet of his sail; “there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes.  There’s white water again! close to!  Spring!” Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter.  Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged serpents.

“That’s his hump. There, there, give it to him!” whispered Starbuck.

A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron of Queequeg.  Then all in one welded commotion, came an invisible push from astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us.  The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall.  Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped.

Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed.  Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale, tumbled back to our places.  There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes, the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean.

* * * * *

=_Josiah Gilbert Holland, 1819-._=

From The Bay Path.

=_310._= THE WEDDING-PRESENT.

John Woodcock was the first to break the silence.  Rising from his seat, and making his way out of the crowd around him, he crossed the room to where his daughter was standing absorbed in, and half bewildered by the scene, and whispering a few words in her ear, took her by the hand, and led her before the married pair.  Mary extended her hand to him instantly and cordially, and exclaimed, “I knew that you would come to me and congratulate me.”

“That wan’t my arrant any way,” said Woodcock bluntly, “and I shouldn’t begin with you if it was.”

“Why John!  I am astonished!” exclaimed the bride; “I thought you was one of the best friends I had in the world.”

But Mary was somewhat affected with Woodcock’s seriousness, and, with no reply to Holyoke, beyond a smile, she asked Woodcock’s reasons for the statement he had made.