Dangerous
in the highest degree was the task of getting near enough to
drive harpoons into the body; but it was successfully
accomplished, the line run on board, and the prize hauled
triumphantly alongside. This was the whale they had now brought
in. We shrewdly suspected that it must have been one of those
abandoned by the unfortunate vessels who had fled, but etiquette
forbade us saying anything about it. Even had it been, another
day would have seen it valueless to any one, for it was by no
means otto of roses to sniff at now, while they had certainly
salved it at the peril of their lives.
When we returned on board and repeated the story, great was the
amazement. Such a feat of seamanship was almost beyond belief;
but we were shut up to believing, since in no other way could the
vessel's miraculous escape be accounted for. The little, dumpy,
red-faced figure, rigged like any scarecrow, that now stood on
his cutting-stage, punching away vigorously at the fetid mass of
blubber beneath him, bore no outward visible sign of a hero about
him; but in our eyes he was transfigured--a being to be thought
of reverently, as one who in all those dualities that go to the
making of a man had proved himself of the seed royal, a king of
men, all the more kingly because unconscious that his deeds were
of so exalted an order.
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