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Dinner was half over, and Bang had not eaten any thing, when, unseasonable as the hour was, the little pot valiant master, primed with two tumblers of grog, in defiance of the captain's presence, fairly fastened on him, like a remora, and pinned him down with one of his longwinded stories about Captain David Jones, in the Phantome, during a cruise off Cape Flyaway, having run foul of a whale, and thereby nearly foundered; and that at length having got the monster harpooned and speared, and the devil knows what, but it ended in getting her alongside, when they scuttled the leviathan, and then, wonderful to relate, they found a Greenlandman, with royal yards crossed, in her maw, and the captain and mate in the cabin quarrelling about the reckoning.
The prince felt his blood stand still, and he grew faint; but he took heart, for there was no time to waste. Yet he could nowhere see the Remora. "Hi!" shouted the prince. Then, from a narrow chink at the bottom of the smooth, black hill, a chink no deeper than that under a door, but a mile wide, stole out a hideous head!
In calm weather, they carried out those which they had kept and fed for the purpose, in their canoes, and when they had got to a sufficient distance, attached the remora to the head of the canoe by a strong line of considerable length. When the remora perceives a fish, which he can do at a considerable distance, he darts away with astonishing rapidity, and fastens upon it.
The mass of small animals, held back by this peculiar sieve, then slides down his throat, which is a tube about as wide as a boy's wrist! We said just now that Nature was full of surprises. Is it not surprising to find a gigantic Whale feeding in this way! Inside the great mouth the Remora? or Sucking Fish, is often found.
But when he had looked on for half-an-hour, and only a river ran where the Remora had been, while the body of the Firedrake lay stark and cold, he hurried to the spot. Drawing the sword of sharpness, he hacked off, at two blows, the iron head and the tail of the Firedrake.
Seeing the float, the shark got it into his mouth, and disengaging the sucker by a tug on the line, made a bolt at the fish; but his puny antagonist was again too quick, and fixing himself close behind the dorsal fin, defied the efforts of the shark to disengage him, although he rolled over and over, lashing the water with his tail until it foamed all round. After such a spirited combat, it is somewhat tantalising to read, that the final result could not clearly be made out; it is scarcely possible, however, not to wish success to the remora.
"There spoke all Fairport in one voice!" exclaimed Oldbuck "it is the very spirit of the borough has infected us all; I think I have smelled the smoke these two days, that the wind has stuck, like a remora, in the north-east and its prejudices fly farther than its vapours.
It was a deep-sea turtle of a surety, for the nearest land was a thousand miles away. We put the Snark about and went back for him, Hermann driving the granes into his head and neck. When hauled aboard, numerous remora were clinging to his shell, and out of the hollows at the roots of his flippers crawled several large crabs.
At intervals, the turtle-catcher would look to his line; and when the extra strain upon it proved that the remora was en rapport with a turtle, he would haul in, until the huge chelonian was brought within striking distance of his heavy club; and thus would the capture be effected.
"Now," thought he, "if I can only make these two fight, why the Remora may kill the Firedrake, or take the heat out of him, at least, so that I may have a chance." Then he seized the ivory glass, clapped it to his eye, and looked for the Remora.
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