Now, what I want you to do, is to keep your eyes open aloft, and sing out for every sail you see, jist as if a sperm-whale blowed. I an't partickler if you raise both at once, if you sing out 'sail ho!' fust. I'll do my part; and when the 'tryworks' go over the side, you'll hear more of my plans, and not afore.-That's all I've got to say this time, I guess."

"And enough, too, split me!" said the new mate; "three cheers for Captain Coffin!" and the crew opened their throats, and swung their hats accordingly.

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'Thank'ee, boys," said the Captain, when the clamour had subsided; "you're a lively crew, I must say. We've six long twelves, besides muskets and plenty of munitions, and if we should happen to fall in with a Britisher about our own size, and he begins fust, all I want you to do, is to obey orders; and," continued he, lifting his head and rising on his toes, like a game-cock on a walk, while he pointed to the colours which the black steward had just run up at the gaff, "to remember, that all them thar blessed eighteen stars in that bit of buntin' yander, be for us, and all them fore and aft stripes for the enemy. Send royal yards aloft, Mister Jinney, and keep the ship to her course."

Under cover of the shout with which his last injunction was received, Captain Coffin stalked modestly down to his cabin, while the crew, grinning in each other's faces at their skipper's eloquence, went to work with a will, to make the craft walk.

Before night they had topgallantsails in, and laying her course well up for the East Cape, with a smashing breeze on the quarter, the Black Hag. glet flew. Taking the strength of the gale with her, the ship had run into the wild Cape latitudes almost before the crew had done canvassing the captain's speech, or listening to the tales which one or two of the oldsters were ready enough to tell, about the barren and desolate spot to which they were bound.

They had not raised a single spout, save a finner's, or a sail, except a Brazilian coaster or two, and a fast-sailing brig under Portuguese colours, which Captain Coffin pronounced to be a slaver, when they took their first Cape gale, a "stiff sneezer," as the old hands called it, but as different, nevertheless, from the wet southeasters which used to drench them of nights, when "trying out" off the Brazil coast, as one can well imagine. It now blew great guns from the northeast -clear, dry, and cold,-with not a rag of scud to be seen in the sky, while the seas were the same mountain billows which had rolled into the Captain's mind so deeply, doubling the Cape of Good Hope when a boy. The truth is, as has often been remarked before, there is a grandeur about a northeaster off this old headland, which is felt to the same degree in no other part of the globe. The very petrels and albatrosses, as they rode in the foamy hollow, or tripped aslant the side of a huge, seething sea, seemed larger and more venturous than those which followed the ship on her old cruising-ground, and were wont to lie-to under her lee, with a sharp eye to her drift, at every blow. And then to see the cape-pigeons, blown away from the misty ridge of one sea, soaring above the spread of the spray, to drop into the

warm to his young days; not to speak of the first quiet glance which he got at the majestic billows themselves, heaving up their long, hoary tops, and broad, glistening sides, as if to shut out all but the stars, and the wild blast. There was a chilliness, too, in the feel of the weather, and a sort of giddy, empty sensation within one's self, as the ship buried her lean bow, hissing, to the heel to the bowsprit, in the tremendous green seas, or rolled her lee yardarms under, as she slid down into the deep, dark trough, where the stormstaysails flapped in the sudden lull; and these last feelings, strange as it may sound, had at least as much to do as wind and wave, in taking the Captain's mind twenty years back, until, as he gazed, it seemed to him that he was on the same voyage, although he well knew that the captain and mates of that ship, and at least two of the boat-steerers, were sleeping in their watery graves.

However, although a grand sight to see, these same mountain waves were not altogether as harmless as lambkins at play.

"Well, old fellows," thought Coffin, with a sort of sigh,-for rude as he was in speech, his mind was not entirely devoid of sentiment-" though my old shipmates are dead and gone, here you are, rolling on sublimely as ever; while I have a clear sky overhead, a lively craft beneath, a good crew, and plenty of sea-room. What can a sailor ask more, for a change?"

"Look out! hold on!" shouted a boat-steerer, as the ship rose, creaking and straining, on the breast of a longer billow than usual, coming up in the wind too fast, when smash came the top of the next, a huge, tumbling wall of greenish brine, right in over the quarter, snapping four stancheons short off, knocking the breath out of Captain Coffin's body, for a moment, and breaking the starboard quarter-boat's back, as she hung at the cranes. Luckily, it did no further damage, beyond starting the round-house, and half-filling the cabin with water; though, if the worthy skipper had not instinctively grasped the two parts of the topping-lift, which swung him inboard with the rail, and, of course, could not unreeve, perhaps, as the poet says:

"At this hour he might not be

Telling old tales about the sea." Flapping her maintopsail, she fell off again, with both gangways afloat; and Captain Coffin, shaking his rough coat, painfully drew a full breath, like a crippled duck after a long dive.

An hour before dawn, the gale was at its height. The wind blew with awful fury, inspiring no feeling now but a sort of vague terror; the air was filled with spoondrift; the sea rolled in single waves the whole length and breadth of the horizon, narrowed as it was, each black, towering mass of water looming in the light of the setting moon, like nothing so much in the wide world, as some bold, bare ridge, which you have seen in your travels on shore, filling up all between you and the sky, from where you stood. All this time the moon shone on this terrible scene with such wan and corpse-like quietude, that you literally prayed for her to go down. There was something almost beyond the power of endurance in the faint, sickly glare, which she threw aslant the ship's drift, while the spray made the greenhands shiver, as it showered in

However, when the moon did set, and another sea broke in over the bow, smashing the galley, stove and all, to bits, and taking everything movable off decks, to the cover of the tryworks, they looked more anxiously still for day to dawn; which it did at last, in a doubtful, unpleasant sort of a way, the ghastly, gray look of the sky flickering over the terrific scene, as if the tremendous force of the wind had scooped out the sea into one immense moving mountain of water, which rolled dimly down, from as far as the eye could see over the bulwarks, to the ship's very yardarms, when each man held his breath, with an awkward look on his haggard face, lest it should break aboard.

However, the gray clouds began to gather to leeward as day advanced, and before night the gale had blown itself out. The wind shifted just before sundown, still blowing fiercely in squalls, and gradually settling in the right quarter, so that in the mid watch they shook the reefs ont of the topsails, and held the ship to her course.

The next day they set the carpenter to work at the bulwarks, and patched up the stove with strong wires, so that the cook's heart did not break after all, though his peace of mind, as he said, seemed broken to pieces when he first beheld the ruins of his galley lying strewn about

the decks.

knew that if he chose to risk it on his own responsibility, there would be no lack of volunteers He looked coolly round among the men, who were anxiously watching every puff of the whale's spout, and "Lower away the larboard quarterboat," said he in a low, quiet tone, looking full at his boat-steerer, who, wild islander as he was, seemed to have no stomach for the business. There was no time to think about it, however, for by the time he got aft himself, his boat was down, and every man of the crew in his place. Kicking off his shoes, he came over the side as lightly as a feather, and they pushed off-the boat's falls dangling before some of their eyes in rather an ominous way, as they thought that the chances were decidedly against her ever hanging at those cranes again.

Nevertheless, Dick was all composure, giving his orders, and handling the steering-car as quietly as if he were taking his sweetheart on a pleasant excursion upon Buzzard's Bay. This did not tend greatly to reassure the men, as this proverbial coolness of Dick's, who could be fiery enough on ordinary occasions, was known to be the very

basis of his character.

"Give way, boys," said he, as calmly as if the sun were six hours high. Each man tugged des perately at his oar, except the South Sea Islander, after oarsman, who was no less a personage than who was busy clearing away his harpoons. The the surgeon of the ship, cast one glance over his

under the bow. The helm was shifted, and they ran to windward of him, and then hauled the mainyard aback, for what purpose it was hard to conjecture, unless by mere force of habit, since there was hardly twilight enough to light the binnacle-lamp by, much less to " turn up" a whale. Be that as it may, there he was close aboard, an old schoolmaster, as they said, with a hump on him as broad as a reef-head. He was going to the eastward, slowly surging along at the rate of two knots an hour. He had just risen when the men aloft espied his spout; and had they raised" him some two or three hours before, in all probability he would have added his quantum towards filling up the ship. As it was, he was in the right not to hurry himself, since the sun had already sunk his disk beneath the waves, and Captain Coffin, with the lost men in his mind, dare not order a boat to be lowered at that unseasonable hour. "Hang it!" said he, as he stood at the knightheads looking wistfully after the unconscious leviathan, "that fish is no use thar; if we had him in the blubber-room, he might count two thousand dollars."

Without saying another word, he jumped down on the forecastle, and walked aft to his cabin, forgetting in his chagrin, I suppose, to order the mainyard squared. His own boat, as I have already mentioned, had been stove by a sea a few days before.

As he disappeared, Dick Jenney, who now headed the chief mate's watch, looked after him, and then at the darkening sky, and then in the direction of the whale, as if to signify what would be the upshot of it if they only had an hour more of daylight. However, the stars were peeping

they rounded the vessel's bows. The first be saw rather more distinctly, perhaps, than he wished, and the wide, dim look of the last, gummering in the southwest, where a mass of white, frigid-looking clouds still reflected the last rays of the sun, and "grimly darkling" in the east, was anything but pleasant. However, Doctor Drastic paid his own passage, besides giving his professional services to the crew, so he was allowed to do pretty much as he chose, in any matter not es sentially concerned in the operations of the cruise. He had only to thank his own love of adventure, and some slight jealousy of Dick Jenney, for getting himself into this scrape; so, manfully shutting his eyes upon the absurdity of his present position, the young disciple of Galen looked no more

to windward, but pulled away like the rest.

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Spring to it, Doctor; a fine night for a row!" said Jenney, with a gleam in his blue eye.

“ Quid times!” answered Drastic sententiously, handling his oar like the fisherman whom Caesar's famous interrogatory has immortalized.

Another involuntary glance to the eastward, where the waves just showed the run of their white heads in the dusky stretch of water astern, a second up at the Hagglet's long, wedge-like bow, with the eager faces of his shipmates peering down on the boat, and the Doctor's eye caught a glimpse of the Captain's figure waving his hand for them to return, while his sharp hail rang past them unheeded. As Drastic bent back again, his glance fell for a moment on the figure-head, a petrel as large as a crow, with its sooty wings extended, and the mandibles of its beak apart, as if to utter the farewell scream. The boding look of the image sunk into his soul, as the crew pulled short round with the starboard oars. "Decidedly," thought he, as he knew they were now going

straight on to the monster, "decidedly, we are in for it this time."

"Give way strong," said Jenney, plying the long heavy oar which steered the boat with his right hand, while he pressed strongly on the Doctor's with his left; "one pull more, and we're on to him. Stand up, John Kapooley, and let him feel how deep a Kanacka can dart an iron."

As he spoke, they shot past the animal's dangerous flukes, and, coasting his immense side, obtained a position close to his hump, when at the very moment when his heavy gray eye rolled apprehensively upon the boat, the harpooner darted both irons, and missed. He was a native of the Sandwich Isles, a capital boat-steerer-perhaps the best in the ship; nevertheless, that night his craft failed him. The whale sank as suddenly as so much stone, and as they backed off from the vortex, I do no injustice to the Doctor when I say that he hoped sincerely that they were rid of him in toto. There was scant time for self-congratulation, however, for the next moment he rose again, not having finished his breathings, nor seeming thoroughly "gallied," though he hauled off his course, head to sea, and began to move on faster than before, throwing up his spout in a slanting direction, like thick puffs of light-coloured smoke, coming, as it were, out of the very sea.

Dick now ordered the Islander aft to the steering-oar, while he passed to the bow to strike the whale with his own hands, clearing away a lance, that he might give him his death-wound at the same moment, if the occasion served. They pulled away with a fresh start, determined to fasten this time, since the stupid creature would not be counselled.

"Now," said the mate, in a calm, stern tone, which went to the heart of every man who heard him," lay me right on to his hump in the break of the short seas there, and it's a dead fish or a stove boat, or I'm not Richard Jenney."

He planted himself firmly on the grating, with the harpoon in his hand, and the steel lance-head glistening before him; the men rowed with all their strength, while the Kanacka, enraged at his own failure, steered straight on to a spot where he marked the waves breaking short, with a fleck or two of foam, like the young flood on a small rift of sand. The sulky wretch had taken his cue to make a sure thing of one alternative or the other, and dashing sheer through the crest of a wave, they beached the boat slap on the creature's broad back, abaft of his side-paddles, when of course both harpoons went up to the seizings into the slippery, bluish-gray ground beneath the keel. It was rather a nervous moment; for the Doctor distinctly felt him rubbing the thin plank beneath his feet, and, for a second they were fairly aground, when the most trifling upward movement of the living mass beneath would have sent the boat to shivers, and every man to take his chance of being picked up in the dark, if, indeed, he escaped the concussion with life enough in him to swim. They backed water with a will, scraping up the black skin with their oar-blades, as Jenney's wild warning rang sharply in their ears, and his lance, knocked out of its place by the shock, fell into the sea before he could use it. The old schoolmaster, aroused at last, cut out his flukes, feeling for his foes, no doubt, though rather too far astern. The sight of his small, as

thick as the stem of a stout tree, and his tremendous tail, at least twenty-four feet across, sweeping the air so close, put life into their very rowlocks, while the immense thickness of the blubber on the hump prevented him from feeling the sting of the irons at once, until they managed to force the boat her length free, when down came his tail, broad wise, in a cloud of spray, as if a giant had struck the sea with their heaviest anchor, and off he went in the wind's eye with a sudden jerk, which threw the Doctor against the steering-oar, and caused the Indian to growl out something in his Mowee lingo, which sounded mightily like a curse. Drastic could hear them cheering away like mad in the ship, as he scrambled back to his seat, though when he looked up, not a sign of her was to be seen. The spray of a sea dashed cold in his face; and, " Ah, my fine fellows," muttered he, spluttering out the brine, "it's sport to you, but as for us-"

"Bale de boat!" exclaimed the Islander; and the Doctor, feeling the water washing about his ankles, seized hold of a scoop, and went heartily to work, not forgetting to pitch a full measure of the intruding element into the dusky face of the

steersman.

On they flew, over and through the waves, right in the eye of the wind, the mate tending the line, and talking as calmly as if he were pumping a greenhand at the lee wheel, a fortnight out of port, though the bow dipped to the gunwale's edge in the wild seas, while the sheets of foam hissed as if alive with snakes, as they shot past astern. The Islander's elf-locks waved back from his wet face, and his small, cannibal eyes glanced from the steering-oar at every black surge the boat tore through; while the rest of the crew sat still enough on the thwarts, with their oar-blades in the air, now that they were fast to the whale, each man wishing in his heart that the irons would draw out, or the line part-especially after the stars came thickly out upon the lone stretch of water around them, with the ship out of sight, and the wind beginning to freshen. While the ship's company were watching them, each man felt that it would not do for the Hagglet's crack boat to go twice down upon such a slow coach as this old bull then seemed to be, and to come off with slack warps; but now they all wished that he would "sound out the line," or break clear in some way, even to the mate himself, though cutting adrift, which needed only the edge of the boat-knife on the strain of the rope, never for a moment seriously entered into his head. The waves were mounting higher and higher on each side of the boat, as if emulous of her speed, and as the moon did not rise until late in the mid-watch, Jenney knew that if he succeeded in "turning him up" at all, it must be long before that time. Miles on miles of water were already between their frail bark and the ship, and the chances of swamping or running under-which had already happened that voyage

or of losing the Hagglet altogether-which was the worst of the three to face-grew stronger and stronger at every flap of his infernal flukes, as he canted his bluff head up to bring his sharp nether jaw to the surface, just as a ship rises over a rough sea. They had three drags out, yet still the whale surged on at the rate of twelve knots an hour, straight as the stag flies with the wind in his nose the line as taut as a bowstring-an

outline of the tail bending over his head every instant. But, with the first gush of crimson, the animal's strength seemed to leave him; and he lay helpless as a log, while the blood, ejected in thick jets from his spout-hole, floated in immense clots upon the waves.

The line now slackened again, and as perfect silence was preserved in the boat, the mate began to hope that their long run was over. By degrees the animal's pace abated, until the line hung in a bight, and he lay still, wallowing in the swells, the tip of his flukes, and his dark hump, with the poles of the two harpoons still sticking in the sockets, indistinctly seen in the starry shade, as the boat tossed on the jostling tides, where the waves tumbled in from either

side on the smooth "slick" of his wake.

The mate watched the spot where he lay in tently, until his keen eye caught a glimpse of the spout. The bowman took the slack of the line in his hand, and, at a sign from his officer, began slowly and cautiously to warp the boat alongside, while the mate crouched in the bow with his lance ready, and the Islander stooped as low as he could at the steering-oar. It was a moment of most intense interest; for, by this time, the thought had crept into each man's breast, that upon the death of that whale might rest their only chance for a morsel of food, supposing that the weather did not change for the worse; and days, as was likely enough, might elapse before they fell in with their ship, if, indeed, Providence favoured them so much as ever again to see a human face but their own. However, it was plain that the animal did not move ahead; and, as the Doctor coiled away the slack line in the tub, he fervently prayed to himself that the mate might get within reach of his dart. Carefully watching the feel of the slender rope, with a strong and steady hand, assisted by the midshipoarsman, and, in some degree, by the steering oar, the bowman drew up past the whale's flukes, to within a few feet of the side-fin; then, relinquishing his grasp, he seized the knife, while the rest of the crew sat ready to back off, and the mate poised his lance, watching the moment to give the fatal stroke, as the animal rolled his nearer side up towards the boat, as she rose from the hollow of a sea. At this critical moment, finding himself nearer than he thought, the whaleman changed his purpose, making a "sett," as it is called, instead of a dart," or, retaining the pole in his hands, while he thrust the keen steel head through the edge of the sidepaddle into the creature's vitals, "churning," or working, the lance from side to side, to reach his life. Doctor Drastic, who watched the brave fellow's proceedings closely, held his oar with a

Though the boat was bow on to his eye to leeward, he showed no other intimation of the presence of his enemies but by rolling his immense bulk from side to side in the ruddy waters, while Jenney, covered with blood and sweat, plied his lance with deadly effect, aiming to cut the large vessels of the lungs, and so finish him at once.

"Starn all! Back with her!" shouted the mate at last, to the secret relief of the Doctor, who had been anxiously watching the blood-spout, as it grew shorter and darker, until it barely cleared the rim of the monster's nostril, indicating, of course, that his last struggles were near. The stout arms of the oarsmen forced the light vessel beyond the sweep of the ponderous tail, which, shortly after, suddenly appeared, quivering in the air, like a black pennon floating in the starlight. For one single second it hung, like a mighty ensign of death, above the ensanguined surges; then, coming broadside down, crushing the waveheads to mist with a sound like nothing earthly, it was again whirled aloft, dimming the seamen's eyes, and again descended with the speed of thought. Then nothing was visible but one thick cloud of silvery spray, above which the dark edge of a fluke could be seen indistinctly quiver. ing. Before the foam, which spread over the sea, had driven to leeward as far as the boat, the cloud sank, and the noise created by his last agonies-something between the screech of the wind in a typhoon and the roar of a cataract— suddenly ceased, as the slain monarch of ocean's pastures extended his immense length upon the sea, floating deep, with his sharp under jaw up, and his enormously-disproportionate head towards the spot where the sun had sunk. Each man drew a full breath when the "flurry" was over. The mate, pointing to the albatross, which had alighted near the spot, and to the back-fins of several sharks, already gathering to the promised feast, like vultures round a sick camel in the

desert, said, coolly,

"The fish has turned up. There will be birds and shirks enough around the carcass by daylight. Whatever comes out of this 'venture, we shall not starve, at least. But whether a 'blanketpiece of him ever goes over the Black Hagglet's side, Doctor, is another matter."

"What do you propose to do now, Mr. Jenney?" asked the person addressed, wiping the blood from his person.

"Hang on to the old schoolmaster until we get a clear horizon around us, by all means," answered the mate. "God knows, we may have need of him in more ways than one. Down with that signal, sir!" he said, sternly, perceiving that the Kanacka had lighted the boat's lantern and hoisted it at the end of the after-oar; "I have no notion of rotting in an English prison, while there is a chance left," he continued, as the man sullenly obeyed.

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Why," said the Doctor, cheerfully, "if a fellow could only drink salt water, like an albatross, we might do well enough until the ship or the frigate