o her afore you could 'a'
said Jack Robinson! Down she went agin, pullin' the line arter her, coil
on coil; but the pain wouldn't allow her to stay down long, and directly
she was out agin, thrashin' the water with her flukes till it was all
churned up like blubbers o'blood,--for her side was bristlin' with
harpoons, and the life pourin' out on her like rain out of a
thunder-cloud.

"Meantime the captain had been hauled aboard, and as he sunk down on an
oar,--for he couldn't stand,--all his shirt and hair a-drippin' red, his
cold, spiteful eye shot into me like a bullet, and says I to the mate,
'I'm a doomed man.'"

"Then my father began ramblin' wildly about goin' overboard himself, and
how he seen a stream o' fire afore his eyes as he sunk into the cold and
dark; and how there came an awful pressure on his brain, and a roarin'
in his ears; and how the strength went out of his thighs, and was as if
the marrer was cut,--how he heard a gurglin', and felt suffocation, and
then clean lost himself!"

At this point John Chidlaw ceased to be master of his voice, and all at
once hid his face in his arms. When the woman who had been listening so
attentively, getting one of his rough hands upon her knee, stroked it
gently, without a word, and by and by he returned her a little
pressure, and then, steadying himself up, he said: "It ain't no use to
think on't, Rose,--it's all over now, and they've met beyond the seas o'
time, my poor father and mother, for they both crossed long ago,--met,
and knowed each other, I hope, but the one never come to himself here,
nor recognized the other. My mother took straight to her bed; and when
she wore the white shawl agin, and had it drawed across her bosom, it
was for that journey from which none on us come back."

"Dear John," says Rose, very softly,--all the coquette gone,--only the
woman left. And presently he was strong enough to go on.

"It was a good many year," he said, "not till I was a'most a man, before
I came to understand rightly what it was that sot my father crazy. The
captain had been agin him all along on account of his too much sperit,
and that capterin' o' the whale finished up the business, and pinted his
fate. It wa'n't long arter this till Captain Griscom found occasion to
treat him very hardly, which bein' resented only by a look, he ordered
him down below to be flogged! This, Rose, was what broke the spirit on
him; he was never himself arterwards, never knowed nothi