whale
finally sounded to escape them.

But when he came up again, there was the mysterious enemy, hanging to
the whale like a bull dog, and the beating re-commenced. The sea about
the hectored whale was tinged with blood. The creature's back was
lacerated frightfully and without any doubt whatsoever, it was being
beaten to death by its antagonist.

Tugg grew greatly excited, and ordered a boat lowered. We took four
sailors and left Pedro in command of the becalmed schooner, and rowed
off towards the scene of the battle between the whale and the mysterious
fish.

"It must be some kind of a huge ray," I suggested. "That's the tail that
is being used like a club."

"By the e-tar-nal snakes!" exploded Tugg, "it's a different kind of a
sea-bat from anything I ever seed or heard of. You take it from me,
that's a sea-sarpint, or wuss!"

The whale was evidently at its last gasp when we left the schooner. It
soon rolled over on its side. The mysterious flail stopped beating the
huge body and the water seemed churned excitedly at the nose of the
leviathan.

"The porpoises have got at it," I suggested.

"Not much they ain't," returned Captain Tugg. "There ain't no porpoises
around today. Whatever the critter is that killed the whale, it's at
dinner now."

And it was true. The mysterious denizen of the deep that had beaten the
whale to death, ate out the huge mammal's tongue and had sunk again into
the sea before we rowed near enough to distinguish its shape or size. It
had disappeared as mysteriously as it had risen and seemingly all it had
killed the mammal for was to eat its tongue.

Captain Tugg's eye glistened when he saw the proportions of that whale
closer to. He stood up, looked long towards the inlet where there seemed
to be some movement among the craft anchored there, and then ordered us
to row in close to the whale's tail.

He passed a hawser around the narrow part of the whale just forward of
the tail and then ordered the men to pull for the schooner. It was a
tug, now I tell you! but we got the whale to the Sea Spell after a
while. I expected to see the spick and span schooner all messed up with
try-out works, and grease, and smoke. It disgusted me that the Yankee
skipper should be so sharp after the Almighty Dollar. But I didn't yet
know Captain Adoniram Tugg.

I saw that a number of craft had started out of the inlet--a much
puffing steam tug ahead, drawing several smaller boats behind it. There
was