But Davis was not listening to him, his quick eye had caught something floating ahead; altering the course a point he called to Harman to let go the sheet, then, leaning over, he grabbed the floating mass in both hands, yelling to the other to balance the canoe.
“Get out on the gratings and hold her down,” cried Davis, “our fortune’s made. Fish! No, you fool, it’s ambergris, what comes from whales’ innards, and is worth hundreds of pounds. Lord send they don’t see us!”
“Mind!” yelled Harman.
The gunnel lipped the water despite his weight and the outrigger rose a foot as Davis strove, then with a mighty effort he brought it tumbling on board, the water pouring off it, and there it lay between his feet a huge, knobby, putty-coloured mass, with octopus sucker-prongs sticking in it like tiger claws, and a two-fathom strip of pale green seaweed twined about it as if for ornament. Harman, without a word, crawled back across the outrigger grating and trimmed the sail while Davis, without a word, resumed the steering paddle.
He did not mind about altering his course now; he put her dead before the wind while Harman, half kneeling on the stub of the forward outrigger pole, and with his hand on a stay, reported progress.
“No, they ain’t seen us,” said Harman; “they’re all crowdin’ back on the ships and the fightin’s over. There’s never no good in fightin’, as I said to you this mornin’—not unless you get the other chap’s back to you and belt him on the head sudden. Now if those ballyhoos had quit arguin’ who’d harpooned first and kept their eyes skinned they’d a’ got ambergris instead of sore heads. How much ’s that stuff worth, do you reckon, Bud?”
“Mean to say you don’t know and you been on a whale-ship?”
“Never heard tell of the stuff before nor sighted it,” replied the other. “Whalemen don’t take stock of nothing but blubber—where does it come from, d’ye think?”
“Out of the whale,” said Davis, “and it’s worth twenty dollars an ounce.”
Harman laughed. When Bud had worked upon him sufficiently to make him see the truth he first took a look to make sure the whale-ships were showing only their topsails above the horizon, then he sat down to calculate the amount of their fortune.