I fell upon my knees and clung with both hands to the slot I had cut in the whale’s blubber in to which to thrust the oar. I dug my fingers into the greasy flesh and hung on for dear life. I actually expected that the whale—and of course my sloop—would be overwhelmed.
The waterspout, traveling with the speed of an express train, bore down upon me. With it came the wind, roaring deafeningly. I lost all other sound, with such enormous confusion the tornado swept upon me. The whale rolled as though it had come to sudden life again.
Over and over it canted. I know my sloop was lifted completely out of the sea. The waterspout whirled past—within three cable-lengths of the dead leviathan,—and the tempest shrieked after. The whale rolled back. I slid down the curve of the carcass and dropped into my plunging sloop. I feared to remain longer near the dead whale, but cast off both at bow and stern, and let the sea carry me some yards from the heaving, rolling carcass.
And then I could once more see the waterspout. It was still careening over the sea, its general direction being nor’west; but it whirled so that it was quite impossible to be sure of its exact direction.
However, of one thing I was confident. The sailing vessel which I had so joyfully discovered an hour ago, lay in the track of the waterspout. She lay still becalmed and if the spout threatened to board her, there would be no possible chance of the vessel’s escaping destruction.
Chapter XII
In Which I Find Myself Bound for Southern Seas
My little sloop pitched so abominably that I could not stand upright, but fell into her sternsheets and there clung to the tiller as she swept along in the wake of the tornado. The waves did not break about the Wavecrest, for she was still within the charmed circle of oily calmness supplied by the dead whale. At some distance, however, the waves were tossed about most tempestuously.