if he should swallow me?" Nor to this day can I understand
how I escaped the portals of his gullet, which, of course, gaped wide as
a church door. But the agony of holding my breath soon overpowered every
other feeling and thought, till just as something was going to snap
inside my head, I rose to the surface. I was surrounded by a welter of
bloody froth, which, made it impossible for me to see; but oh, the air
was sweet!

I struck out blindly, instinctively, although I could feel so strong an
eddy that voluntary progress was out of the question. My hand touched
and clung to a rope, which immediately towed me in some direction--I
neither knew nor cared whither. Soon the motion ceased, and, with a
seaman's instinct, I began to haul myself along by the rope I grasped,
although no definite idea was in my mind as to where it was attached.
Presently I came butt up against something solid, the feel of which
gathered all my scattered wits into a compact knob of dread. It was the
whale! "Any port in a storm," I murmured, beginning to haul away again
on my friendly line. By dint of hard work I pulled myself right up the
sloping, slippery bank of blubber, until I reached the iron, which, as
luck would have it, was planted in that side of the carcass now
uppermost.

Carcass I said--well, certainly I had no idea of there being any life
remaining within the vast mass beneath me; yet I had hardly time to take
a couple of turns round myself with the rope (or whale-line, as I had
proved it to be), when I felt the great animal quiver all over, and
begin to forge ahead. I was now composed enough to remember that help
could not be far away, and that my rescue, providing that I could keep
above water, was but a question of a few minutes. But I was hardly
prepared for the whale's next move. Being very near his end, the boat,
or boats, had drawn off a bit, I supposed, for I could see nothing of
them. Then I remembered the flurry.

Almost at the same moment it began; and there was I, who, with fearful
admiration had so often watched the titanic convulsions of a dying
cachalot, actually involved in them. The turns were off my body, but I
was able to twist a couple of turns round my arms, which, in case of his
sounding, I could readily let go. Then all was lost in roar and rush, as
of the heart of some mighty cataract, during which I was sometimes
above, sometimes beneath, the water, but always clinging, with every
ounce of energy still left