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Updated: May 10, 2025
Against the dark blue of the evening sky to northward glowed a faint phosphorescence, arch-shaped, from which shot, with pulsating regularity, long shafts of light. They beat almost to the zenith, and back again, a half dozen times, then the whole illumination disappeared with the suddenness of gas turned out. "Now I wonder what that might be!" marvelled Thrackles.
They darkened the coral and the sands and the glistening sea growths just as a cloud temporarily darkens the landscape only the occultations and brightenings succeeded each other much more swiftly. We stared stupefied, our thinking power blurred by the incessent whirl of motion and noise. Suddenly Thrackles laughed aloud. "Seals!" he shouted through his trumpeted hands.
"How many of these damn things we got?" he inquired. "About three hunder' and fifty," Thrackles replied. "Well, we've got enough for me. I'm sick of this job. It stinks." They looked at each other. I could see the disgust rising in their eyes, the reek of rotten blubber expanding their nostrils. With one accord they cast aside the masks.
"We don't get her for nothing," agreed Thrackles. "Double pay and duff on Wednesday generally means get your head broke." "No trade," said the Nigger gloomily. They turned to him with one accord. "Why not?" demanded Pulz, breaking his silence. "No trade," repeated the Nigger. "Ain't you got a reason, Doctor?" asked Handy Solomon. "No trade," insisted the Nigger. An uneasy silence fell.
"Well, you take what's left." He marked Thrackles heavily over the eye. There was a breathless pause; and then Thrackles, Pulz, the Nigger, and Perdosa attacked at once. They caught the master unawares, and bore him to the deck. I dropped at once to the ratlines, and commenced my descent. Before I had reached the deck, however, Selover was afoot again, the four hanging to him like dogs.
We spoke of trivialities almost for the first time since our landing, fused into a temporary but complete good fellowship by the relief. "Wonder how the old doctor is getting on?" ventured Thrackles, after a while. "The devil's a preacher! I wonder?" cried Handy Solomon. "Let's make 'em a call," suggested Pulz. "Don't believe they'd appreciate the compliment," I laughed.
Such lines one might make with a hard blue pencil pressed strongly into the flesh. The surgeon moved a little nearer. "Can you give me any news of my friend Thrackles?" asked Darrow lightly. "Or the esteemed Pulz? Or the scholarly and urbane Robinson of Ethiopian extraction?" "Dead," said the captain. "Ah, a pity," said the other. He put his hand to his forehead. "I had thought it probable."
Now the seamen distributed themselves for more leisurely and accurate marksmanship. Handy Solomon lay flat on his stomach, resting the rifle muzzle across the top of a sand dune. Pulz sat down, an elbow on either knee for the greater steadiness. The Nigger knelt; but Thrackles remained on his feet. No rest could be steadier than the stone-like rigidity of his thick arms.
"S'pose we go up the gulch and get it, then," suggested Thrackles. But at this Handy Solomon drew back in evident terror. "Up that hole of hell?" he objected. "Not I. You an' Pulz go." They wrangled over it, Pulz joining. Perdosa, shaken to the soul, crept in, and made a bee-line for the rum barrel. He and the Nigger were frankly scared.
"I'm not going to have this crew aboard," stated Captain Selover positively, "I'm going to clean her." He himself stayed, however. We rowed in, constructed a hasty fireplace of stones, spread our blankets, and built an unnecessary fire near the beach. "Clean her!" grumbled Thrackles, "my eye!" "I'd rather round the Cape," growled Pulz hopelessly.
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