"But, as I live, hither comes something from the open sea!"
I rose up and looked to where he showed me, and as the ship rose to a great wave, far off I saw a dark speck among white-crested rollers, that rose and fell, and came ever nearer, more swiftly than wreckage should.
Now some of the men who clustered under the shelter of the fore deck, with their eyes ever on us, rose up from their places and began to look out seaward over the bows through the spray to find out what we watched, and ere long one man called to his mates:
"Ho, comrades, here comes flotsam from the open sea!"
Slowly the men rose up one by one and looked, clustering round the stem head, and a little talk went round as to what this might be.
"It is a bit of wreck," said one.
"Hardly, for the gale has not been wild enough to wreck a ship in the open; 'tis maybe lumber washed from a deck," answered another.
"It is a whale--no more or less."
"Nay," said old Kenulf; "it behaves not as a whale, and it comes too swiftly for wreckage."
"Would it were a dead whale. Then would be profit," said another man again, and after that the men were silent for a long while, having said all that could be guessed, and watched the speck that drew nearer and nearer, bearing down on us.