“Oh!” says Kamelillo; “girl whale. All right, dam Dutchman, me fren. You break jam. Letta go.”
“It iss not of use,” said Kreps, and he sighed. “You understand not de yearning, de ideal. Listen! Liebchen, she iss de abstraction, de principle. Aber no. You cannot. De soul iss alone, iss not comprehend.”
“All right,” says Kamelillo. “You look here. Go see thas girl whale on a bamboo raft. No good sit on log all night, sing hoohoo song.”
Kreps was taken with that notion. “So, my friend?” he says.
“You teach her like missionary teach Kanaka girl,” says Kamelillo, getting interested. “You teach her to she wear petticoat, no stan' on her head. You teach her go Sunday school.”
I says, “Look out, Kreps. That whale'll drown you. She's got no culture.”
But Kreps was calm. “I vill approach Liebchen more near,” he says. “It iss time to advance. I vill go mit Kamelillo, my friend.”
Kamelillo spent the morning making a bamboo raft, and in the afternoon they put out. Liebchen was over by the harbour entrance, lying low in the water and maybe asleep. Kamelillo had a bamboo pole in his hand to pole the raft with, but he had shod it with his harpoon head. They drew alongside, and Kreps was facing front, with his back to Kamelillo. He lifted his oar to slap the water, and Kamelillo drew off, and cast the harpoon. Liebchen, she came out of her maiden fancies. She acted plain whale. That's a way of acting which calls for respect, but it's not romantic. She slapped the bamboo raft, and there was no such thing. She swallowed the harbour and spit it out. She whooped and danced and teetered. She let out all her primeval feelings. She put on no airs, and she made no pretences. She turned everything she could find into scrambled eggs, and played the “Marseillaise” on her blow-hole. She did herself up into knots to break whalebone, and untied them like a pop of a cork. She was no more female than she was science. She was wrath and earthquakes and the day of judgment. She scooped out the bottom of the harbour and laid it on top, and turned somersets through the middle of chaos. Veronica took to the woods. I ran along the north shore, thinking they were both scrambled, but I found Kamelillo pulling Kreps through the shallows by his collar, and shaking the water out of his eyes, and not seeming to be disturbed. But Kreps took off his spectacles and wiped them, and he says:
“Ach, Liebchen!” he says. “She iss too much.”
“Thas whale!” says Kamelillo. “Thas all right!”