"She throwed out a great spout o' blood, and dashed furiously under.
"'God help us! She'll come up so as to upset our boat!' cries the captain. 'Every man here at her, when she comes in sight!'
"He had hardly done speakin' when I felt a great knock, and at the same time seen somethin' a-flyin' through the air. She had just grazed us, shovin' our boat aside as a pig shoves his trough, and was breakin' water not a stone's throw ahead.
"The captain had gone overboard; but we obeyed his last words before we looked arter him, and had a dozen irons into her afore you could 'a' said Jack Robinson! Down she went agin, pullin' the line arter her, coil on coil; but the pain wouldn't allow her to stay down long, and directly she was out agin, thrashin' the water with her flukes till it was all churned up like blubbers o'blood,—for her side was bristlin' with harpoons, and the life pourin' out on her like rain out of a thunder-cloud.
"Meantime the captain had been hauled aboard, and as he sunk down on an oar,—for he couldn't stand,—all his shirt and hair a-drippin' red, his cold, spiteful eye shot into me like a bullet, and says I to the mate, 'I'm a doomed man.'"
"Then my father began ramblin' wildly about goin' overboard himself, and how he seen a stream o' fire afore his eyes as he sunk into the cold and dark; and how there came an awful pressure on his brain, and a roarin' in his ears; and how the strength went out of his thighs, and was as if the marrer was cut,—how he heard a gurglin', and felt suffocation, and then clean lost himself!"
At this point John Chidlaw ceased to be master of his voice, and all at once hid his face in his arms. When the woman who had been listening so attentively, getting one of his rough hands upon her knee, stroked it gently, without a word, and by and by he returned her a little pressure, and then, steadying himself up, he said: "It ain't no use to think on't, Rose,—it's all over now, and they've met beyond the seas o' time, my poor father and mother, for they both crossed long ago,—met, and knowed each other, I hope, but the one never come to himself here, nor recognized the other. My mother took straight to her bed; and when she wore the white shawl agin, and had it drawed across her bosom, it was for that journey from which none on us come back."
"Dear John," says Rose, very softly,—all the coquette gone,—only the woman left. And presently he was strong enough to go on.
"It was a good many year," he said, "not till I was a'most a man, before I came to understand rightly what it was that sot my father crazy. The captain had been agin him all along on account of his too much sperit, and that capterin' o' the whale finished up the business, and pinted his fate. It wa'n't long arter this till Captain Griscom found occasion to treat him very hardly, which bein' resented only by a look, he ordered him down below to be flogged! This, Rose, was what broke the spirit on him; he was never himself arterwards, never knowed nothin' at all clear, exceptin' about the takin' o' that whale; and that he told over and over a hundred times, arter that fust time, just as I've told it to you, but all before it and all behind it was shadders, till the great shadder of all came over him.
"When I come to hear on 't, I said I hoped my father would meet that 'ere captain som'er's on the seas of eternity, and flog him within an inch of his life; and I ha'n't repented the sayin' on't yet."