ur majesty's sake,' said the whale
again; 'for I had been deputed to wait in this latitude for your
arrival, and convey you to our sovereign. But though I am now in the
third century of my age, I can survive a dozen such prickings, and if
I chose could shiver the Crimson Dragon with a blow of my tail, as in
1804 I stove the Essex, and made driftwood of her spars.'

"In an instant I was seated within the mighty maw of this famous
monster. His jaw-bones were forty feet in length; the roof of his
mouth was fifteen feet high, and formed of a spacious arch of
'balleen,' or whale-bone. His crescent-shaped tail, thirty-five feet
from tip to tip, swept the depths twice or thrice; and when we emerged
into the air, the blood spouted from his pores, and he threw cataracts
of water through his spiracle. I saw the Crimson Dragon some miles
away, but there were no traces of her boats. The crews of the launches
were fathoms deep in the ocean!

"I passed the cape of Greenland, rounded the base of Mount Hecla, and
was escorted to the abode of the king of the cetacea by a multitude of
his subjects. A submarine island, forty fathoms from the surface, had
been occupied three thousand years by this venerable person. He came
out to meet me upon the back of a mighty 'rorqual,' and a body-guard
of four hundred picked narwhals swam before him. Fifty white whales
surrounded their monarch, and a host of dolphins, grampuses, and
porpoises brought up the rear. Banners of dyed seal-skin bore his
arms--three gourds, _argent_, upon a field _vert_; and with these were
carried as trophies the wrecks of ships, including the identical
shallop whence he was expelled on the voyage to Tarshish. But,
marvellous beyond all, the 'great fish' (falsely so translated, since
no cetaceous creature can be denominated a _fish_) into which he was
received still lived, and accompanied him. It was now the eldest of
the species, but very sprightly, and burdened with dignities. The
Seer-King saluted gravely, and gave me a draught of spirits, distilled
from the fronds of a rare sea-tangle. His long tenure in the deep had
obliterated much of the similitude to man, but his memory of
terrestrial matters was extraordinary. The weeds were wrapped about
his head after the manner of a crown, and he carried a sceptre of
walrus tusk. He told me that his original three days' experience under
the sea had so cooled his blood, that the suns of Nineveh parched him,
and he had cried for