“This monster’s arms, or tentacles, enlaced the whole colossal body of the whale, so that they must have been fully 60 feet or 70 feet in length. At their junction with the head they were about 5 feet in girth, as a huge fragment lying at the bottom of the boat conclusively proved. At the time we so rashly attacked the whale the mighty mollusc must have been in his death-throes, for immediately after our boat’s disappearance the whale ‘sounded.’ When, a minute or two later, he rose again to the surface, the other boats’ crews saw him busily turning over and over, as if collecting the scattered fragments of his late victim. At that time they had not noticed me among the various flotsam, but it must have been then that I vanished down the capacious gullet of the voracious cetacean. Fortunately for me they were furiously bent upon attacking the whale, and so in some degree avenging their slain shipmates.
“The second mate had loaded his bomb-gun with an extra heavy charge, and at the same moment that the harpooner darted his weapon the bomb was discharged also. It penetrated the cachalot’s lungs, inflicting a mortal wound by its explosion therein, the noise of which was the shock that I felt while in that horrible tomb. As is usual, in his dying agony the whale ejected the whole contents of his stomach, by means of which cataclysm I was expelled therefrom and restored to the upper world once more. But had it not been for long and severe practice in diving, taken while pearl-fishing in Polynesia, enabling me to compete successfully with Kanakas, who almost live in the water, and even to outdo them at times, I must have been suffocated. The only time I was ever before so distressed for breath was in Levuka, when mate of a schooner. Our anchor fouled a rock in eight fathoms of water, and we could by no means persuade any of our natives to attempt its release. Rather than lose the fair chance of sailing that day I tried the dangerous task, succeeding after a desperate struggle, but regaining the surface with blood streaming from mouth, nose, and ears.
“I lay back in the stern-sheets of the boat feeling cruelly exhausted, the pain of my ghastly wound becoming continually more severe. But, even pre-occupied as I was, I could hardly fail to notice a want of cordiality towards me among my shipmates. An uncomfortable silence prevailed, depressing and unusual. It was not due to the natural solemnity following upon the sudden loss of five of our number, cut off in the prime of their health and strength, for, until I had told the wonderful story of my going down into Sheol, their demeanour had been very different. I looked appealingly and wonderingly from one to the other, but could not meet any eye. They were all furtively averted with intent to avoid my gaze.
“To my relief we reached the ship speedily. I was assisted on board gently enough, and led aft to where the skipper was roaming restlessly athwart the quarter-deck, like a caged animal. I was allowed to sit down while he examined me keenly as to the occurrences of the day. The gloom deepened on his face as I recounted all that I could remember of the fate of my unfortunate shipmates, until, my tale being told, he began, in curt, half-angry fashion, to question me about my antecedents. Not liking his manner, besides feeling faint and ill, I gave him but little information on that head.
“Then he burst out into petulant disconnected sentences, in bitter regrets for the lost men, blame of everybody generally, and at last, as if his predominant thought could no longer be restrained, shouted, ‘I wish ter God A’mighty I’d never seen y’r face aboard my ship. Man an’ boy I b’en spoutin’ fer over forty year, an’ never see, no, ner hearn tell ov, sech a hell-fire turn out. Yew’r a Jonah, thet’s wut yew air, an’ the sooner we get shet ov ye the better it’ll be fer all han’s, an’ the more likely we sh’l be to hev some luck.’
“This was such a crusher that I did not attempt to reply, nor, owing to my condition, did I quite realise the full brutality and injustice of the man as I might otherwise have done. I crept forward to my bunk, to find myself shunned by all my shipmates as if I was a leper, which treatment, as I had hitherto been a prime favourite, was very hard to bear. But in the face of ignorant superstition like this I was powerless. So I held my peace and sat solitary, my recovery being much hindered by the miserable state of my mind. The rest of the passage to Valparaiso was a time of such misery as I never experienced before or since, and I wonder that they did not land a hopeless lunatic.
“However, I fought against that successfully, determined to live if I was allowed to, and at last, to my intense relief, I shook off the dust of my feet against that detestable ship and her barbarous crew, thankful that their cruelty had stopped short of heaving me overboard as a sacrifice to the manes of my lost shipmates.”
There was a silence of some minutes’ duration after he had finished his yarn, then from one and the other came scraps of personalia confirming the general outlines of his experiences as to the existence of those nightmares of the sea of incredible size, as attested by the ejecta of every dying cachalot. All gave it as their firm belief that it must have been a sperm whale that swallowed Jonah in the long ago, but it was the general opinion that as a rule a man was perfectly safe in the water from a sperm whale except under such circumstances as had been detailed, and that our friend had been the victim of a mistake on the part of the hungry leviathan.