We slid a tree down under the water, and then another, and so on, till it was a messy-looking channel, a sort of log jam, with roots and palm-tree tops mixed in, which I thought the tide would float out, and it did afterward, some of it.
Then we went back to where Kamelillo was cooking, squatted on the shore with his bare back turned to the water. He took no interest in Liebchen. He was making a kind of paste of ground roots, called “poi,” which wasn't bad, if you rolled a fish in it, and baked it on the coals, and thought about something else. But at that time Liebchen came round the north shore in a roar of foam, bringing her flukes down now and then with a slap to make the harbour ache, and she slapped near a barrel of water over Kamelillo and his fire and his poi. Kamelillo says:
“Why for? She not my whale. You keep her out a my suppa. Why for?”
Kreps was disgusted because Kamelillo didn't like Liebchen. He went and stood on the bank, in the interest of science, and studied the habits of the cetacean, but he got no results. She had no habits, to speak uprightly, only notions. They weren't any use to science. Sometimes she'd flutter with her fins, and twitter her flukes, and sidle off like she was bashful, and then she'd come swooping around enough to make the harbour sizzle, and stick her nose in the bottom and her tail in the air, trembling with her emotions, and then she'd come up and smile at you a rod each way. I judged she meant all right, but she didn't understand her limitations. Her strong hold was the majestic. She appeared to have it fixed she wanted to be kittenish. That was the way it seemed to me. But Kreps studied her mornings and afternoons and into the night, and day after day it went on, and she bothered him. Then he saw he was on the wrong tack, and put his helm about, and he says:
“She is de Ewigweibliche. She is not science. She is boetry. She is de sharm of everlasting feminine,” and he heaved a sigh. I says:
“Ewigweibliche!” I says. “Everlasting feminine! What's the use of that?”
I took to studying Liebchen too, and it appeared to me Kreps' idea wasn't useful He was a man to have sentiments naturally. He'd sit out on the end of a log moonlight nights, with his fat face and spectacles shining, and Liebchen would muzzle around with a ten-foot snout like an engine boiler, and a piggy eye; and he'd sing German lullabies; “Du bist wie eine Blume.” I didn't think she was like a flower. She was more like an oil tank.
So Kreps would sing to her in the moonlight, but Kamelillo didn't like her. Veronica didn't like her either, and would stand off and cackle at her pointedly. She seemed to think Liebchen carried on improper and had no refinement. Why, I guess from her point of view sea bathing wasn't becoming, and when Liebchen stood on her head in the water, Veronica used to take to the woods with her feelings pretty rumpled. Kamelillo disliked Veronica on account of her fussiness, and because she had lit on him and scratched him when he wanted to be let alone. He wanted to make Veronica into poi, but I didn't think there was any real nourishment in her; and he wanted to break the log jam and let the whale out, but I told him it was Kreps' jam.
“Ain' harbour belong him,” said Kamelillo. “Ain' him slap harbour on me. Thas whale bad un. I show him.” He went to Kreps. “I tell you, dam Dutchman,” he says, meaning to be soothing and persuasive. “I tell you, we cutta bamboo, harpoon whale. Donnerblissen! Easy!”
“Du animal!” says Kreps. “Mitout perception, mitout soul, mitout delicate!”