We saw no more of it, and Aggie was beginning to look white about the ears and the tip of the nose as usual, when Tish decided to drop our anchor and there take up our position. She therefore stopped the engine and Aggie heaved the anchor overboard. But we did not stop.
“There’s certainly a very fast tide,” Tish said, looking over the side. “We are going as fast as before.”
“Then the bottom’s moving too,” Aggie said sharply. “The anchor’s caught, all right.”
We looked about. Either we were moving out to sea or Smith’s Island was going toward the mainland and would soon collide with it. And at that moment the front end of the boat dipped down, shipping an enormous amount of sea, and throwing us all forward, and then the entire boat shot ahead as if it had been fired out of a gun.
“It’s an earthquake, Tish,” Aggie groaned, lying prone in the water.
Tish pulled herself to her knees and stared about her.
“It may be a tidal wave,” she said. “But they go in, not out.” She then stared again, forward, and finally rose to her feet. I followed her, and she lifted a shaking finger and pointed ahead. Only a hundred feet or so from us, and heading for Europe, was an enormous whale. One point of our anchor had caught in his blowhole, and we were traveling at what I imagine was sixty miles an hour or more.
“Really, Aggie,” Tish said, “this is a little too much! I gave you the lightest duty on the boat—simply to anchor this boat to the bottom. Instead——”
“What did you want me to do?” Aggie demanded. “Go down with it, and hook it to a rock?”
“When I want a whale I’ll ask for a whale,” said Tish with dignity. But with her usual alertness she was already making a plan. She at once started the engine and put it in reverse. “After all,” she said, “we have the thing, and we may as well try to take it in.”