“Steady, now!” shouted Captain Sol, releasing his hold and picking up the lance.  “Now, then, work her ahead.”

A final haul, and the boat was fairly alongside of the fleeing animal, careening violently under its rapid rushes; and, in response to the order “Git to wind’ard,” we sprang to the weather rail.  A moment of suspense, a quick motion of the lance, and the great white body of the whale rose from the water and fell heavily back, beating it into foam in its convulsive struggles.

“She dies hard,” said Captain Sol, shaking the water from the creases of his oil-skin as the boat rounded to at a safe distance from the dying whale.  “But,” he continued, lighting a match by biting the sulphur and puffing violently at a short, black pipe, “that ain’t nothing to what they do sometimes:  is it, Sam?”

“I ain’t denyin’ of it,” was the reply of that individual, who was now sculling the boat about the whale in a great circle.

“I’ve seen,” continued the skipper, “a white whale smash a bot so clean that ye’d thought it had been through a mill; and it was a caution haow we didn’t go with it.  That was a curious year,” he added.  “Something happened to drive the whales up here so thick that the hull river was alive with ‘em, and of course we was for reapin’ the harvest.  When we struck the rip-rap—­as they call the tide agin’ the wind—­it was jest alive with ’em, puffin’ and snortin’ on all sides.  I had three harpoons aboard, besides a rifle, and in a minute I had two foul, with buoys after ’em, and as one big feller came up alongside to blow I let him have it with the rifle.

“Naow,” he went on, “whether they heard it or not I can’t say, but I heard a yell from Sam jest in time to look and see a whale rise I’ll ’low twenty foot clean out of the water.  Then there was a kind of a rush, and Sam and me went down, and when we riz it was gone.  The critter had hopped clean over that bot as slick as nothing.  That kinder tuck the peartness aout of us, so to speak; but later in the day I got aout the gun ag’in, havin’ broke the lance, and in killin’ the critter she jumped on the bot, and—­wall, Sam and me we lit aout, and was picked up after a spell; but that bot, there wasn’t enough of her to make kindlin’-wood of.

“They ain’t vicious like,” continued the skipper, “but clumsy, and if yaou git in the way ye’re bound to git hurted.  Round the bend at Bic Island one came ashore one time and got left every tide, so she was aout of water an hour or so every day.  Heaps of city folks went to see her, and one chap came along and let on haow she couldn’t be alive aout of water, and poked her like with a stick.  Wall, it ain’t for me to say haow many feet she knocked him, but when she fetched him with her flukes it was a Tuesday, and I guess he thought he’d reached the turnin’-p’int of Friday when he hauled himself aout of the mud.

“No, they won’t exactly live aout of water, but they’ll stand it a like of three weeks if yaou splash ’em every hour or so.  They sent one to England that way.  They ain’t fish.  Whales’ milk’s good, if cream is.