“Oh, where can my father have gone, then?” exclaimed Walter, who was still in a state of unusual excitement, into which, weakened as he was by famine, the alarm he had just experienced had thrown him.
“Your father is in his boat, be assured of that, Walter,” answered the mate calmly; “and now, the sooner you go on the raft and join your sister the better.” Still Walter did not go, but again seizing the flag, kept waving it; but the raft glided on, moved by the strong wind, which now reached the part of the ocean on which the whale floated. The mate himself could not help standing to watch it, but it rapidly got farther and farther off. At last, taking Walter’s arm, he said, “Come, we must waste no more time here; Nub and I will help you down to the raft.”
Walter made no resistance, but allowed himself to be lowered down, the mate and Nub following him. Alice threw her arms around his neck when she saw him, exclaiming,—“What has all that noise been about? I have been so frightened. Why did you not come and tell me?”
The mate briefly explained what had happened; while Walter, with apparent calmness, added a few remarks; and, soothed by his sister’s voice, he soon appeared to recover, and Mr Shobbrok had no apprehensions about him. The mate told him to lie down and rest, which he at once did. The raft being on the lee side of the whale, he and Nub then hoisted the sail.
“Oh, Massa Shobbrok, we have forgotten de harpoons!” exclaimed Nub.
“So we have,” answered the mate. “In my anxiety about Walter I forgot them.”
“Den I go up and get dem,” said Nub; and he again climbed up the side of the whale. He had lowered down a couple of harpoons and three spears, when the mate, who had in the meantime cast off the lines which had secured the raft to the whale, in his anxiety to lose no time, sprang up to pull out another spear which had been fixed nearer the tail; Alice, who was standing near him, taking hold of the line still attached to it. At that moment, from some unknown cause, the monster body began to move, and before either the mate or Nub could descend, over it rolled; while Alice, in her terror still holding on to the line, was lifted from her feet and dragged into the water. The sail, no longer under the lee of the huge carcass, filled, and away glided the raft, leaving the poor little girl, with the mate and Nub at some distance from her, struggling in the water.
Note 1. The author confesses that he has had some difficulty in understanding the descriptions in the old journal from which the tale is taken. From its evident truthfulness and general accuracy, he would not feel justified in altering them. But the illustration beats him, and sets at defiance all the accounts in his books of natural history. He must therefore leave his readers to judge for themselves.