242 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



look at the water. Also, there was silence except for a distant, inter- 

 mittent rumbling that sounded like thunder behind a range of moun- 

 tains, but which was, nonetheless, felt through the feet more than 

 heard through the ears. Small sea birds wandered about on the ab- 

 solutely smooth sea, leaving endless arrowheads upon its shining sur- 

 face, or creating little stars as they suddenly went below upon urgent 

 business of their own. A man wearing a clean white shirt slithered 

 down the line into the dinghy. 



Captain Joshua Nathan emerged from a jfinancial reverie which he 

 had been indulging unabashedly and uninterruptedly since break- 

 fast in one of the hammocks. He stretched mightily, yawned, and 

 listlessly picked up a spyglass. The other hammock swayed and the 

 face of an astonishingly young and beautiful woman peered over its 

 rope edge. 



"Do you see anything yet?" Mrs. Joshua Nathan inquired drow- 

 sily. 



The captain said nothing for a long time while his glass swung in 

 a wide arc to the north along the seemingly interminable shore 

 towards a far distant headland. His beard jutted out underneath the 

 telescope even farther than did the peak of his cap above it. His wife 

 smiled frankly at his earnestness. Then she made a very tactless re- 

 mark. 



"I don't think the silly things will come back at all," she began. 

 "They can't be that stupid, and then there are all those other vultures 

 waiting for them up north." And she would have gone on in 

 that vein had Joshua Nathan not turned to starboard instead of to 

 port to admonish her. As he did so, however, his roving telescope 

 swept the nearby shore and the vast fields of gently heaving kelp 

 that intervened. He immediately became rigid and let out a low 

 gurgle. 



"What is it?" gasped Maria Nathan, swinging herself agilely out 

 of the hammock, for she had got to know the significance of that 

 strange sound. Her husband was speechless, so she came up quietly 

 beside him. Then she saw what he was staring at and it was so close 

 she did not need a spyglass to see what it was. The kelp was heaving 

 mightily over an area of a square mile as if some underwater volcano 

 was about to burst forth. 



