“She don’t seem as though she could ever have been wood,” said the mermaid. “She looks kind. I don’t feel as though she were that—that person. Please ask if she has seen our friend.”
“‘My dear,’ she said, very gently, ‘your old playmate is dead.’” [Page 105.]
“Yes; my dear child,” said Panope—for she it was—answering the mermaid’s thought, “I have seen him;” and the immortal sighed.
“His family are very anxious about him, my lady,” said the whale, who was conscious of an awe he had never known before, though he felt he could trust the Sea-Nymph.
“They need be anxious no more,” said Panope, gently and sadly.
“What has happened?” asked the mermaid, turning pale, but keeping herself very quiet.
Panope went to her, and the immortal daughter of the sea put her white arms round the mermaid and held her in a close and soft embrace.
“My dear,” she said, very gently, “your old playmate is dead.”
“You don’t say so, ma’am!” said Moby Dick, with a great sigh; and then he swam away to a little distance and left the mermaid to the care of the Sea-Nymph, for he was a whale of very delicate feelings.