In the meanwhile, the monster thus stranded did not move, nor attempt by struggling to regain the water whilst the tide was still high.
It was dead, and a harpoon was sticking out of its left side.
"There are whalers in these quarters, then?" said Gideon Spilett directly.
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"Oh, Mr Spilett, that doesn't prove anything!" replied Pencroft. "Whales have been known to go thousands of miles with a harpoon in the side, and this one might even have been struck in the north of the Atlantic and come to die in the south of the Pacific, and it would be nothing astonishing."
Pencroft, having torn the harpoon from the animal's side, read this inscription on it:—
"'MARIA STELLA,'
"VINEYARD."
"A vessel from the Vineyard! A ship from my country!" he cried. "The Maria Stella! A fine whaler, 'pon my word; I know her well! Oh, my friends, a vessel from the Vineyard!—a whaler from the Vineyard!"[1]