“Hi, there!” cried Job Perkins. “That dog’ll git inter trouble; and then what will Cap’n Si say?”
I fancy the surprise of the porpoises when Major got among them was quite as great as the amazement of the men on the deck of the slow moving Seamew. The schooner was just slipping through the sea, the short waves lapping against her hull very gently. Major could easily have kept up with us.
The porpoises were sailing around and around the ship by this time, and the big dog bounced among them, barking and biting—or trying to bite—and otherwise acting like a mad dog. He plunged first for one porpoise, then for another, rising as lightly as a dog of cork on the waves, and throwing himself about in great abandon.
He so excited the porpoises that they made a general charge upon him. The dog beat a retreat in a hurry; but the sea-pigs had their “dander up” now and a score of them followed him, jumping, snorting, and tumbling about, evidently much delighted at putting the black stranger to flight.
Major came towards the ship with a rush—his only refuge. The men cheered him excitedly; and the watch below was aroused and rushed up to see what was going on. So did Captain Somes appear, and the moment he saw the dog with the big fish after him, he sang out for the sling and scolded us unmercifully for letting Major overboard.
I verily believe that the porpoises would have torn the noble fellow to shreds in a very few minutes. When Major came over the side, he was cut in several places and one of his ears hung from a thread or little more. I learned then that, although the porpoise is such a playful creature, and apparently harmless, it has means of defending itself not to be sneered at!
I was leaning on the forward port rail, looking idly across the stretch of comparatively quiet sea (the porpoises having rushed away to lee’ard), when I saw rising to the surface not many furlongs from the ship’s side, a great brownish mass that I took to be seaweed.
After a storm we often met fields of rock weed, wrenched from the shallow banks underneath the ocean by the terrific waves. This rising mass was not much different—in first appearance—from many weed-fields I had seen.
Mr. Alfred Barney was seldom on deck without his fowling-piece—a beautiful, double-barreled shotgun—in weather like this. He was a splendid wing shot and seemed to delight in bringing a gull flapping down into the sea, although he never shot at albatross.
“What you looking at, Webb?” he demanded of me, suddenly, coming around the corner of the forward house, gun in hand.