172 
CHASE AND CAPTURE 
savagely against our ship, some of us thought we could 
hear the shrieks of poor Berry above the roaring of the 
storm ; others imagined in their melancholy, that they 
could occasionally hear the captain's voice, ordering the 
ship to “ bear up,” while the boats had been seen more 
than fifty times by anxious spirits, who had strained 
their eyes through the gloom until fancy robbed them 
of their true speculation and left her phantasmagoria in 
exchange. There were not many on board who did not 
think of home on that dreadful night— there were not 
many among us who did not curse the sea, and all 
sea-going avocations ; while, with the same breath, they 
blessed the safe and cheerful fireside of their parents and 
friends who resided at home, and which at that moment 
they would have given all they possessed but to see. 
But at the moment despair was firmly settling upon us, 
a man from aloft called out that he could see a light 
right a head of the ship, just as we were “going about,” 
by which we should have gone from it. We all looked 
in that direction, and in a few minutes we could plainly 
perceive it ; in a short time we were close up with it, 
w r hen, to our great joy, we found the captain and all the 
men in the boats, lying to leeward of the dead whale, 
which had in some measure saved them from the 
violence of the sea. They had only just been able to 
procure a light, having unfortunately upset all their 
tinder through the violent motion of the boats, by which 
it became w r et— but which they succeeded in igniting 
after immense application of the flint and steel — or their 
lantern would have been suspended from an oar directly 
