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You remember two years ago a sailor ran away with the wife of a whaler's captain away up at Narwhale Inlet. Well " Again the two men stared silently at each other. MacVeigh turned slowly toward the child. She had fallen asleep, and he could see the dull shimmer of her golden curls as they lay scattered over Pelliter's pillow. "Poor little devil!" he exclaimed, softly.
"Or in other words, on our gigantic narwhale." "Explain yourself, Ned." "It's just that I soon realized why my harpoon got blunted and couldn't puncture its hide." "Why, Ned, why?" "Because, professor, this beast is made of boilerplate steel!" At this point in my story, I need to get a grip on myself, reconstruct exactly what I experienced, and make doubly sure of everything I write.
An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise present to her highness another horn, pertaining to a land beast of the unicorn nature. The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a milk-white ground colour, dotted with round and oblong spots of black. His oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it, and he is seldom hunted.
It does not seem to be used like the blade of the sword-fish and bill-fish; though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for food. Charley Coffin said it was used for an ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising to the surface of the Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through.
He is never chased; he would run away with rope-walks of line. Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur Bottom! I can say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer. OCTAVOES.* These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which present may be numbered: I., the GRAMPUS; II., the BLACK FISH; III., the NARWHALE; IV., the THRASHER; V., the KILLER.
And we found nothing! Nothing except an immenseness of deserted waves! Nothing remotely resembling a gigantic narwhale, or an underwater islet, or a derelict shipwreck, or a runaway reef, or anything the least bit unearthly! So the reaction set in. At first, discouragement took hold of people's minds, opening the door to disbelief.
"Why not?" Conseil replied. "We sincerely believed in master's narwhale." "We were wrong, Conseil." "No doubt, but there are others with no doubts who believe to this day!" "Probably, Conseil. But as for me, I'm bound and determined not to accept the existence of any such monster till I've dissected it with my own two hands."
"Good lads!" the Canadian muttered. "That means they don't see us as castaways clinging to some wreckage!" "With all due respect to master gracious!" Conseil put in, shaking off the water that had sprayed over him from another shell. "With all due respect to master, they've discovered the narwhale and they're cannonading the same."
Either Commander Farragut would slay the narwhale, or the narwhale would slay Commander Farragut. No middle of the road for these two. The ship's officers shared the views of their leader. They could be heard chatting, discussing, arguing, calculating the different chances of an encounter, and observing the vast expanse of the ocean.
Spyglasses functioned with feverish energy. A supreme challenge had been issued to the giant narwhale, and the latter had no acceptable excuse for ignoring this Summons to Appear! Two days passed. The Abraham Lincoln stayed at half steam. On the offchance that the animal might be found in these waterways, a thousand methods were used to spark its interest or rouse it from its apathy.
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