EDGING SOUTHWAED. 235 



and act calmly, since I was responsible for others. If 

 the animal had not been in so blind a fury, I am afraid 

 my task would have been much harder ; but he was mad, 

 and his ravage rushes were, though disquieting, unsyste- 

 matic and clumsy. It was essential, however, that he 

 should not be allowed to persist too long in his evil 

 courses ; for a whale learns with amazing rapidity, 

 developing such cunning in an hour or two that all a 

 man's smartness may be unable to cope with his newly- 

 acquired experience. Happily, Samuela was perfectly 

 unmoved. Like a machine, he obeyed every gesture, 

 every look even, swinging the boat "off" or "on" the 

 whale with such sweeping strokes of his mighty oar that 

 she revolved as if on a pivot, and encouraging the other 

 chaps with his cheerful cries and odd grimaces, so that 

 the danger was hardly felt. During a momentary lull 

 in the storm, I took the opportunity to load my bomb-gun, 

 much as I disliked handling the thing, keeping my eye 

 all the time on the water around where I expected to see 

 mine enemy popping up murderously at any minute. 

 Just as I had expected, when he rose, it was very 

 close, and on his back, with his jaw in the first biting 

 position, looking ugly as a vision of death. Finding us 

 a little out of reach, he rolled right over towards us, 

 presenting as lie did so the great rotundity of his belly. 

 We were not twenty feet away, and I snatched up the 

 gun, levelled it, and fired the bomb point-blank into his 

 bowels. Then all was blank. I do not even remember 

 the next moment. A rush of roaring waters, a fighting 

 with fearful, desperate energy for air and life, all in a 

 hurried, flurried phantasmagoria about which there was 

 nothing clear except the primitive desire for life, life, 

 life ! Nor do I know how long thi3 struggle lasted, except 



