l6 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



end drawn up between his legs and woven into a knot upon his 

 lean, flat stomach. The other man is at the stern, high upon a tower- 

 ing poop. He leans heavily upon a timber ten feet long that passes 

 through a collar in an even greater beam, thrusting up through a 

 huge wooden block in the deck — the post of an immense, straight, 

 double-bladed oar that sweeps back, out, and to the right, away 

 from the tall, curved stern of the ship. 



This man is different. His complexion is a sickly yellow and death- 

 like in the gloom; it is set off by an immense black beard cut square 

 and combed into a series of sharp horizontal and parallel crimps. 

 On his head he wears a tall, cylindrical hat about which is woven 

 a black cloth in the manner of a turban, with its depending end 

 twisted around his neck. His body is clothed in a loose, ankle-length 

 coat of many colors caught about the waist with a rough length of 

 rope. His feet, hidden in the deep shadows below the tall gunwale, 

 are shod in pointed slippers with upturned toes. Neither man speaks. 

 The ship is silent, but for the moaning of the rigging, the lap of the 

 waves, and the hiss of the wake. Neither man moves, though the 

 mighty vessel is rising and falling gently to the pull of the ever- 

 lasting wind. 



The rosy flood from the eastern sky rushes across the bounding 

 waters of the ocean, flecking wave-tops with flashes of vermilion 

 and driving back the lowering darkness of the hot night. The sails 

 are now as if on fire, and the halyards stand out like streaks of blood 

 shot from the sky. The piled-up litter on the huge well deck below 

 is vaguely lit with reddish light. A great white bird comes sailing 

 out of the dawn, wheels silently about the tall foremast, and then 

 suddenly rushes away in a long power glide towards the coming 

 sun. 



Abruptly the lean, brown man in the bows lets out an unearthly 

 call. Despite the constant wind and the working of the ship, it seems 

 to echo back from the very skies. The bearded one at the helm 

 looks up, a heavy door opens under the foredeck, and brown faces, 

 round black faces, slit-eyed yellow faces, and shining shaven skulls 

 immediately appear from among the countless bales piled upon the 

 main deck. Then again comes the long-drawn scream — ^'Na . . . 

 khi . . . reeeee . . . na . . . khi . . . reeeee'' — dying away in 

 softness upon the hurrying wind. 



