120 THE CRUISE OF THE " CACHALOT," 



being. The other members of the crew escaped the 

 blow, and the harpooner managed to cut the line, so that 

 for the present they were safe enough, clinging to the 

 remains of their boat, unless the whale should choose to 

 rush across them. 



Happily, his rushing was almost over. The bomb 

 fired by Mr. Count, with such fatal result to poor Bam- 

 berger, must have exploded right in the whale's throat. 

 Whether his previous titanic efforts had completely 

 exhausted him, or whether the bomb had broken his 

 massive backbone, I do not know, of course, but he went 

 into no flurry, dying as peacefully as his course had 

 been furious. For the first time in my life, I had been 

 face to face with a violent death, and I was quite stunned 

 with the awfulness of the experience. Mechanically, as 

 it seemed to me, we obeyed such orders as were given, 

 but every man's thoughts were with the shipmate so 

 suddenly dashed from amongst us. We never saw sign 

 of him again. 



While the ship was running down to us, another 

 boat had gone to rescue the clinging crew of the shattered 

 boat, for the whole drama had been witnessed from the 

 ship, although they were not aware of the death of the 

 poor German. When the sad news was told on board, 

 there was a deep silence, all work being carried on so 

 quietly that we seemed like a crew of dumb men. With 

 a sentiment for which I should not have given our 

 grim skipper credit, the stars and stripes were hoisted 

 half-mast, telling the silent sky and moaning sea, sole 

 witnesses besides ourselves, of the sudden departure 

 from among us of our poor shipmate. 



We got the whale cut in as usual without any incident 

 worth mentioning, except that the peculiar shape of the 



