Each of the seamen then continued his course—the shipkeeper waddling along toward the spot where he had left Alice, which was not more than five hundred yards from the scene of his late adventure, and the young harpooner darting swiftly forward in the direction of the blowing horn.
Stump strained his eyes, as he neared the point of his destination, eager to get a glimpse of the captain’s fair niece. In order to relieve her anxiety as soon as possible, he kept up a continual shouting as he advanced.
“It’s all right, Miss Alice—bless your pretty eyes—it’s all right! I’ve seen him, I have, and he’s well and hearty! He was penned up in a sort of seal-hole, but I got him out of it in quick time, and he’s now started off again after the boats.”
Quickening his pace as he moved on, he had soon made so much progress that the little ark, looming up through the fog, directly ahead of him, suddenly broke upon his view. Then looking around him in every direction, and not seeing Alice, he stopped short, and rubbed his eyes, to make sure that they had not been disarranged in such a manner as to deceive him.
The next moment he laughed very quietly to himself.
“What a lubber I am getting to be, to think that the poor gal would have stood where I left her all this time. She’s gone into her little cubby-hole, and is now, I dare say, a-grieving and taking on in a sad fashion. And that’s why she didn’t answer my shouting as I came on. Ay, ay, that’s it, sure enough!”
Eager to soothe the young girl with the news of her lover’s safety, he hurried forward until he had gained the side of the boat, when he hastily threw aside the end of the tarred cloth that covered it. To his astonishment and dismay, the vessel was empty!
Little did the harpooner imagine this as he moved onward over the floating bergs. Hope made his step light and his heart buoyant. The horn was still being blown, and he doubted not that he would soon reach the boat. Suddenly, however, the sound of the instrument became hushed. He paused, waiting in vain for a repetition of the familiar notes. He heard only the whispering noise of the rain, the gurgling of the seal, as it rolled about in the water, impatient for the sunshine, and the cry of the northern bird, as it wheeled in circles through the foggy air. Now and then, it is true, a louder and more startling noise would salute his ears, when some huge mass of ice, becoming loosened on the summit of a miniature cathedral, would fall, with a tremendous crash, to the base of the tower.
He continued his search a quarter of an hour longer, when his further progress was prevented by a channel not less than fifteen feet wide, and which separated the floe into two parts. As he was turning to retrace his steps, his attention was drawn to a number of little eddies that suddenly appeared upon the surface of the water. Round and round they whirled, becoming larger every moment. A peculiar noise, resembling the distant rolling of a drum, rose up from the depths of the sea. The berg upon which he stood, trembled like a rock when the rumbling earthquake approaches its foundation. At length the little whirlpools vanished; the water bubbled and broke into ripples—then parted with a roar, as the hump of a huge whale rose above the surface. Marline had no difficulty in recognizing this monster as the same from which Briggs had been obliged to ‘cut;’ for he saw his own irons protruding from its body. The barbed instruments seemed to madden the creature with pain. It rolled and plunged from side to side, so furiously lashing the water with its flukes, that the harpooner was enveloped in clouds of spray. In order to escape this uncomfortable shower-bath, he ascended a “crystal tower,” the upper part of which, though out of range of the flying drops of water, yet afforded him a good view of the whale. He continued to watch the monster with much interest, feeling sorry that he had not the means with which to put an end to its sufferings. The noise of its spouting was inexpressibly mournful; it was not unlike the half-smothered shriek of a drowning man, heard amid the roaring of the blast. Soon, however, the animal became silent: for a few seconds it remained nearly motionless: then it rushed quickly backward and breached (sprung upward) nearly its full length out of the sea. For an instant, with its fins extended and the tremendous proportions of its body fully exposed, it hovered in the air, and then came crashing down with a noise like the bursting of a thunder-bolt! The upheaving waters dashing against the icebergs, agitated them on all sides. The frozen mass occupied by Marline, rocked so violently that he could scarcely maintain his position. He descended from it just in time to catch a glimpse of the whale’s uplifted flukes, as the monster dove into the green depths of the sea.