want
help more than I do," said the captain, pointing to the others, one of
whom kept murmuring, "Water! water!"

The others scarcely spoke. Captain Bland himself looked bad enough--so
haggard and thin. We soon had him and the rest on deck and their boat
hoisted in, when their captain was carried into Captain Hake's cabin.
After he had taken some weak spirits and water and some food, he was
able to speak without difficulty.

"O sir, do tell me where are Mrs Bland, and Mary, and the `Lady
Alice,'" I said, as I was taking away his plate.

"I wish, Jack, that I could answer the question," he answered. "They
will be fearfully anxious about me, but I trust that they and the ship
are safe enough. Just a fortnight ago, when off the Galapagos, we
sighted three whales. I went in chase of one of them to the northward.
The other boats pulled after the rest. The whale I was following headed
away from the ship, but still I hoped to come up with him before dark
and make him my prize; I had nearly succeeded, and in another minute
should have had my harpoon in his side, when he turned flukes and
disappeared. Though the sun was setting, I expected that he would come
up again while there was light enough to strike him, so waited on the
look-out, but the weather changed; a thick mist came up, the night
became very dark, and though we heard the sound of spouting in the
distance during the night, when morning broke no whale was to be seen--
nor was the ship in sight. Anxious to be on board, I steered in the
direction where I expected to find her, with, as I hoped, one or two
whales alongside. It was blowing fresh with some sea on, but not
sufficient to make it necessary to cut the whale adrift, should one have
been secured. Every hour I expected to come in sight of the ship, but
we had reached the spot where I thought she would be found, and she was
nowhere to be seen. We then steered to the southward and south-east,
supposing that she might have stood after the boats in that direction.
Once we saw a sail, some small craft, a schooner apparently; we tried to
speak her, to learn if she had fallen in with the `Lady Alice,' but she
kept away from us. At length I came to the painful conclusion that if
we did not before long fall in with the ship, we should run a fearful
risk of being starved. We had providentially brought away a bag of
biscuits of about fourteen pounds weight, half a dozen sausages, and a
breaker of water, and w