strictly founded in fact as those I have already related._

CHAPTER VII

_The Baron relates his adventures on a voyage to North America, which
are well worth the reader's attention--Pranks of a whale--A sea-gull
saves a sailor's life--The Baron's head forced into his stomach--A
dangerous leak stopped a posteriori._

I embarked at Portsmouth in a first-rate English man-of-war, of one
hundred guns, and fourteen hundred men, for North America. Nothing worth
relating happened till we arrived within three hundred leagues of the
river St. Laurence, when the ship struck with amazing force against (as
we supposed) a rock; however, upon heaving the lead we could find no
bottom, even with three hundred fathom. What made this circumstance
the more wonderful, and indeed beyond all comprehension, was, that
the violence of the shock was such that we lost our rudder, broke our
bowsprit in the middle, and split all our masts from top to bottom, two
of which went by the board; a poor fellow, who was aloft furling the
mainsheet, was flung at least three leagues from the ship; but he
fortunately saved his life by laying hold of the tail of a large
sea-gull, who brought him back, and lodged him on the very spot from
whence he was thrown. Another proof of the violence of the shock was the
force with which the people between decks were driven against the floors
above them; my head particularly was pressed into my stomach, where it
continued some months before it recovered its natural situation. Whilst
we were all in a state of astonishment at the general and unaccountable
confusion in which we were involved, the whole was suddenly explained
by the appearance of a large whale, who had been basking, asleep,
within sixteen feet of the surface of the water. This animal was so much
displeased with the disturbance which our ship had given him--for in our
passage we had with our rudder scratched his nose--that he beat in all
the gallery and part of the quarter-deck with his tail, and almost at
the same instant took the mainsheet anchor, which was suspended, as
it usually is, from the head, between his teeth, and ran away with the
ship, at least sixty leagues, at the rate of twelve leagues an hour,
when fortunately the cable broke, and we lost both the whale and the
anchor. However, upon our return to Europe, some months after, we found
the same whale within a few leagues of the same spot, floating dead upon
the water; it measured above half