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Updated: June 20, 2025
The water-logged sloop seesawed up and down past the bark's side, one moment rising on a huge comber until I could almost grasp the rail, and the next sinking into a deep hollow between the surges, far below the line of the copper sheathing.
Sometimes we glided along without perceptible motion, and at others jolted down bubbling rapids, the steersmen straining every nerve to keep their bark's head to the current, as she impatiently swerved from side to side in the eddies.
The air, foul beyond expression, tasted of brass, their heads swam and ached to bursting, but absorbed in their work they had no thought of the lapse of time nor the discomfort of their surroundings. Twice during the examination of the bark's papers, Kitchell sent Wilbur out into the cabin for the whiskey decanter in the swinging racks.
It had been the 16th of April when he was rescued from the devouring sea; some days had been spent by the leisurely Dutchman in providing fresh supplies, and the stout bark's favourite maxim seemed to be, "the more haste the less speed." "What chance is there now of my doing any good?" the young Englishman asked himself, bitterly.
A flight of six steps, brass-bound and bearing the double L of the bark's monogram, led them down into a sort of vestibule. From the vestibule a door opened directly into the main cabin. They entered. The cabin was some twenty feet long and unusually spacious. Fresh from his recollection of the grime and reek of the schooner, it struck Wilbur as particularly dainty.
Thou hast a large stake in the Winkelried, and art at this moment thinking what punishment is good enough for an impudent soothsayer who dares dive so unceremoniously into the secrets of so warm a citizen, while all around thee wish thy cheeses had never left the dairy, to the discomfort of our limbs and to the great detriment of the bark's speed."
The boys were interested in this novel kind of whaling; but they were more deeply interested in the possible outcome of the situation in which they, and their friends, and the fur-traders, and the bark's crew, were all placed. The tearing away of this piece of our planet, on which the boys and their companions now sailed, must end finally in some terrible catastrophe.
"I may be a crabbed old feller once in a while, and snarl around some, but my bark's worse than my bite, you know that by this time. So I'll put everything in your hands, with a feeling that it'll be looked after just the same as if I was here."
The two vaguely distinguishable figures disappeared, clambering awkwardly over the rail, and as instantly vanishing into the blackness of the bark's deck. An unsecured bit of canvas continued to flap noisily above me, and the constant surge of water pounded against the bow, but I could perceive now clearly the character I was destined to assume when once safely aboard the Namur.
Those aboard of the bark could do nothing. She was still hove to. The fighting whale had missed her by a hand's breadth once before, but this time he did not swerve. "Cut loose, Tom!" I yelled, finally understanding as did the other men with us the menacing disaster. In a few seconds we would smash into the bark's hull, whether the whale dived or not.
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