250 NIMROD OF THE SEA; OR, 



came from within, and the dead carpenter's voice was heard 

 addressing his son : " Now push ahead, my boy, and hail 

 the first craft you see." Out came the half-naked boy, fol- 

 lowed first by the grindstone, and next by the revived car- 

 penter, not much the worse for wear. His story was that 

 in his watch below, as he thought his funeral, he awoke 

 dreaming that he was going through a threshing-machine, 

 and found that something had torn his hammock, and was 

 digging into his back. He knew this was an awful moment 

 for him, and that he would be dissolved in no time if he did 

 not present a "counter irritant," so he offered the grind- 

 stone to the shark, as he found his assailant to be, and took 

 off the keen edge of his appetite. He then felt compara- 

 tively comfortable ; and presently, to their mutual surprise, 

 father and son met. The boy now held the stone to the 

 cutting edges of the shark's digestion, while his father put 

 an edge on the boy's sheath-knife, to fight their way out by 

 a short cut. They felt the bump on deck, and cut at once. 

 " He who would be free, himself must strike the blow." 



While we sailors were thus tenderly dealing with the 

 sea-shark, the land-sharks were more summarily devouring 

 our poor shipmates on shore. 



In the evening the captain returned from the shore, bring- 

 ing with him but one of the old crew and ten Kanakas. 

 The remaining crew were terribly enrage'd at this ; they felt 

 that he had acted unfairly by them. By word and action, 

 at the time of taking the last whale, he had allowed the idea, 

 that he came to this port pro forma, to satisfy a legal tech- 

 nicality. He had almost said to us, " I must report to the 

 first American consul, and then we will turn to and retrieve 

 lost time." The thought of going to sea with such a hea- 

 thenish crew as now darkened our forecastle was intolerable. 

 When we learned the treatment and fate of our shipmates 

 on shore, our resentment knew no bounds. Stimulated by 



