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He had hold of the dolphin-striker. I could just distinguish his form through the darkness as he followed me. I slid down to help him, and with difficulty hauled him up on the bowsprit. He seemed horror-struck at what had occurred; and so, indeed, we might both well be, and thankful that we had been preserved. Such was the end of the old Rainbow.
"Either the brute will be catching some of us, or we must catch him," he observed, as he prepared a harpoon and line. Descending by the dolphin-striker, he stood on the bob-stay, watching with keen eye and lifted arm for the shark, which now dropped astern, now swam lazily alongside.
It is a raft, with a disc not much larger than a dining-table, constructed out of two small spars of a ship, the dolphin-striker and spritsail yard, with two broad planks and some narrower ones lashed crosswise, and over all two or three pieces of sail-cloth carelessly spread. Slight as is the structure, it is occupied by two individuals, a man and a boy.
He had run out to the bowsprit-end, and from that had slipped down the dolphin-striker, and let himself still lower by means of a looped rope. By this means he had been enabled to swing himself down, so that he could reach the surface.
Unnoticed he got out of the ship over the knight-heads, ran along the back rope, and seizing the dolphin-striker firmly with both hands, lowered himself into the sea without a splash. He swam away, noiseless like a fish, and then struck boldly for the land, sustained, embraced, by the tepid water.
The tow-rope, tautening under the last stroke of our oars, had drawn the boat back in its recoil, and she now drifted close under the Gauntlet's jibboom, which ran out upon a very short bowsprit. I stood up, and reaching for a grip on the dolphin-striker, swung myself on to the bobstay and thence to the cap of the bowsprit, where I sat astride for a moment while Billy followed.
We did not stop to see whether they would obey or not, but, jumping on the forecastle, ran along the bowsprit and down by the dolphin-striker a spar which hangs perpendicularly under the bowsprit from whence we dropped down one by one on to a part of the iceberg which the waves did not reach. The ice was very rough, and we were thus enabled to scramble up perfectly clear of the sea.
Climbing out upon the bowsprit, he next detached the dolphin-striker, and it also was lowered down, while I made myself useful by cutting through the martingales, also the fore-topgallant and royal-stays, that fastened this spar in its place. Several other pieces of timber yielded to the axe; and all, having been thrown downward, floated together upon the motionless surface of water.
There was no escape except out the head-gear, and I went that way, with him after me. Out the bowsprit, on to the jib foot-ropes, and out toward the end I went, hoping to reach the martingale-stay and slip down it to the back-ropes. I did so, but he scrambled down, tumbling and clutching, and gripped me just abaft the dolphin-striker.
The other shark shot forward in a similar manner; but glancing a little to one side, caught in its huge mouth the end of the dolphin-striker, grinding off a large piece of the spar as if it had been cork-wood! This it swallowed almost instantaneously; and then turning once more in the water appeared intent upon renewing the attack.
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