a divided company and, save
for the fact of his blindness tempering the action, the manner of Lund's
showing them his back and deliberately walking off would have been a
deliberate insult.

Not to the girl, Rainey thought. At first he had considered Lund's
character as comparatively simple--and brutal--but he had qualified
this, without seeming consciousness, and he felt that Lund would never
deliberately insult a woman--any sort of woman. He was beginning to feel
something more than an admiration for Lund's strength; a liking for the
man himself had, almost against his will, begun to assert itself.

They stood together by the weather-rail. It was still Rainey's
deck-watch, and at any moment Carlsen might relinquish the wheel back to
him as soon as the girl got tired. Suddenly shouts sounded from forward,
a medley of them, indistinct against the quartering wind. Sandy, the
roustabout, came dashing aft along the sloping deck, catching clumsily
at rail and rope to steady himself, flushed with excitement, almost
hysterical with his news.

"A bowhead, sir!" he cried when he saw Rainey. "And killers after him!
Blowin' dead ahead!"

Beyond the bows Rainey could see nothing of the whale, that must have
sounded in fear of the killers, but he saw half a dozen scythe-like,
black fins cutting the water in streaks of foam, all abreast, their high
dorsals waving, wolves of the sea, hunting for the gray bowhead whale,
to force its mouth open and feast on the delicacy of its living tongue.
So Lund told him in swift sentences while they waited for the whale to
broach.

"Ha'f the time the bowheads won't even try an' git away," said Lund.
"Lie atop, belly up, plain jellied with fear while the killers help
'emselves. Ha'f the bowheads you git have got chunks bitten out of their
tongues. If they're nigh shore when the killers show up the whales'll
slide way out over the rocks an' strand 'emselves."

Rainey glanced aft. Sandy had carried his warning to Carlsen and the
girl, and now was craning over the lee rail, knee-deep in the wash,
trying to see something of the combat. Peggy Simms' lithe figure was
leaning to one side as she, too, gazed ahead, though she still paid
attention to her steering and held the schooner well up, her face bright
with excitement, wet with flying brine, wisps of yellow hair streaming
free in the wind from beneath the close grip of her woolen
tam-o'-shanter bonnet of scarlet. Carlsen was pointing out the rac