The whole affair was growing monotonous as well as extremely wearying.  Perhaps I was a little off my guard; at any rate, my heart almost leaped into my mouth when just after an ugly rush past us, which I thought had carried him to a safe distance, he stopped dead, lifted his flukes, and brought them down edgeways with a vicious sweep that only just missed the boat’s gunwale and shore off the two oars on that side as if they had been carrots.  This serious disablement would certainly have led to disaster but for Samuela.  Prompt and vigorous, he seized the opportune moment when the whale’s side was presented just after the blow, sending his lance quivering home all its length into the most vital part of the leviathan’s anatomy.  Turning his happy face to me, he shouted exultingly, “How’s dat fer high?”—­a bit of slang he had picked up, and his use of which never failed to make me smile.  “High” it was indeed—­a master-stroke.  It must have pierced the creature’s heart, for he immediately began to spout blood in masses, and without another wound went into his flurry and died.

Then came the reaction.  I must have exerted myself beyond what I had any idea of, for to Samuela I was obliged to delegate the task of fluke-boring, while I rested a little.  The ship was soon alongside, though, and the whale secured.  There was more yet to be done before we could rest, in spite of our fatigue.  The other boats had been so successful that they had got two big fish, and what we were to do with them was a problem not easily solvable.  By dint of great exertion, we managed to get another whale alongside, but were fain to come to some arrangement with the Eliza Adams, one of the ships that had been unsuccessful, to take over our other whale on an agreement to render us one-third of the product either in Port William or at home, if she should not find us is the former place.

Behold us, then, in the gathering dusk with a whale on either side, every stitch of canvas we could show set and drawing, straining every nerve to get into the little port again, with the pleasant thought that we were bringing with us all that was needed to complete our well-earned cargo.  Nobody wanted to go below; all hands felt that it was rest enough to hang over the rail on either side and watch the black masses as they surged through the gleaming sea.  They represented so much to us.  Very little was said, but all hearts were filled with a deep content, a sense of a long season of toil fitly crowned with complete success; nor was any depression felt at the long, long stretch of stormy ocean between us and our home port far away in the United States.  That would doubtless come by-and-by, when within less than a thousand miles of New Bedford; but at present all sense of distance from home was lost in the overmastering thought that soon it would be our only business to get there as quickly as possible, without any avoidable loitering on the road.