“We took in water at the Shetland Islands, and sailing north-westward, skirted the coast of Greenland, whence, cruising in a southerly direction, we lay off Labrador, and waited for our prey.  Our crew was fifty men, all told.  Our captain had been a whaler thirty-eight years, and had killed five hundred and six animals or eight more than the renowned Scoresby.  We carried seven light-boats for actual service, and twenty-seven thousand feet, or more than five miles, of rope.  Three men kept watch, day and night, in the ‘crow’s-nest,’ at the maintop; but though we beat along the whole coast, through Davis’ Strait, and among the mighty icebergs of Baffin’s Bay, we saw no cetaceous creatures, save twice some floundering porpoises, and thrice a solitary grampus.  With these beings I endeavored to open communication, but they made no intelligible responses.  The stars also of this latitude failed to comprehend my signals, from which I concluded that they were less intelligent than those of more temperate skies.  But with the animalcules of the sea I obtained most gratifying relations.  A series of experiments with the infusoria satisfied me that they were not loath to an exchange of information, and finally they followed the ship by myriads, so that all the waves were full of fire, which the sailors remarked; and fearful of being observed, I ceased my experiments for a time.

“On the evening of the fifth Saturday of our cruise, I waited till the changing of the watch; then I stole noiselessly upon deck, and secreted myself behind a life-boat which hung at the side of the vessel.  The helmsman was nodding silently upon his tiller; two seamen sat motionless upon the bow, and the lookout party in the crow’s-nest talked mutteringly of our ill-luck as they scanned the horizon.  The Northern Lights were pulsing like some great radiating heart, and the sea was alternately flame and shadow.  The headlands of Labrador lay to the south—­bare, boundless, precipitous; and to the east a glittering iceberg floated slowly towards us, like a palace of gold and emerald.  The ship rolled calmly upon the long swells, the ripples plashing in low lulling monotone, and her hull and spars were reflected darkly beneath me.  I drew a long gray hair from my temple, and subjected it to a gentle friction between my palm and finger; then I pricked my wrist, and leaning forward, placed it against my heart:  five blood-drops—­symbols of the five types of organized creation—­fell simmering into the depths, and the scintillant hair, floating after them, described a true spiral.  In an instant the Aurora grew bright to blindness; there was a rush of infinite stars, and a host of beautiful beings fluttered to the surface of the sea, within the shadow of the ship!  A gull darted along the water, and in the far distance I heard the bellow of the huge Greenland whale.  All animate nature had acknowledged my message; I had touched the nerve of the universes!

“‘Blow me if there warn’t a whale, Ben!’ said one of the men in the maintop.