heard Keller saying, as though he was
watching a street accident, 'Give him air. For God's sake, give him
air.' Then the death-struggle began, with crampings and twistings and
jerkings of the white bulk to and fro, till our little steamer rolled
again, and each gray wave coated her plates with the gray slime. The
sun was clear, there was no wind, and we watched, the whole
crew, stokers and all, in wonder and pity, but chiefly pity. The
Thing was so helpless, and, save for his mate, so alone. No human eye
should have beheld him; it was monstrous and indecent to exhibit him
there in trade waters between atlas degrees of latitude. He had been
spewed up, mangled and dying, from his rest on the sea-floor, where
he might have lived till the Judgment Day, and we saw the tides of
his life go from him as an angry tide goes out across rocks in the
teeth of a landward gale. His mate lay rocking on the water a little
distance off, bellowing continually, and the smell of musk came dawn
upon the ship making us cough.

At last the battle for life ended in a batter of coloured seas. We
saw the writhing neck fall like a flail, the carcase turn sideways,
showing the glint of a white belly and the inset of a gigantic hind
leg or flipper. Then all sank, and sea boiled over it, while the
mate swam round and round, darting her head in every direction.
Though we might have feared that she would attack the steamer, no
power on earth could have drawn any one of us from our places that
hour. We watched, holding our breaths. The mate paused in her search;
we could hear the wash beating along her sides; reared her neck as
high as she could reach, blind and lonely in all that loneliness of
the sea, and sent one desperate bellow booming across the swells as
an oyster-shell skips across a pond. Then she made off to the
westward, the sun shining on the white head and the wake behind it,
till nothing was left to see but a little pin point of silver on the
horizon. We stood on our course again; and the _Rathmines_, coated
with the sea-sediment from bow to stern, looked like a ship made gray
with terror.

* * * * *

'We must pool our notes,' was the first coherent remark from Keller.
'We're three trained journalists--we hold absolutely the biggest
scoop on record. Start fair.'

I objected to this. Nothing is gained by collaboration in journalism
when all deal with the same facts, so we went to work each accordi