of a wreck.

But as the Wavecrest sped on, bringing me nearer and nearer to the
object, I saw that I must be wrong. It was not shaped like a ship's hull
although it was black and clumsy enough. But immediately about it the
waves seemed to be calm. At least no waves broke and foamed about the
floating mass.

I watched the thing eagerly, although I could not hope for rescue under
such a guise. It was not, I was almost instantly sure, a vessel of any
kind; as the Wavecrest kept on her course, which brought me directly
upon the object, I was not long at a loss to identify it.

Although I had seldom been far out of sight of land myself, and had
never seen any ocean creature bigger than a blackfish (not the tautog,
but the pilot-whale) I had listened to the stories of old whalemen along
the Bolderhead docks, and I was pretty sure that I had sighted one of
those great mammals--a creature of the sea which is no more a fish than
a horse or a cow is a fish, yet is the greatest wonder of marine life.

Beside, the peculiar condition of the sea immediately about the object
revealed its identity. The whale was dead, I was sure. Otherwise it
would not have been at the surface so long in such a gale. And being
dead, and the seabirds and shark-fish having got at its carcass before
the storm, there was good reason for the waves not breaking over it.

The dead whale lay in a slick, or "sleep," as some old whalemen
pronounce the word, and hope revived in my troubled mind the instant I
realized what the object was, and its condition. The waves were
following me as hungrily as ever; at any moment the sloop might be
overwhelmed. But once let me get the Wavecrest in the lee of this dead
whale, I could bid defiance to the storm. There I could outride the
gale and, when it was fair again, set the sloop's nose toward the
distant mainland.

With rare good fortune the sloop needed little guidance to reach the
dead whale. My original course had been aimed for the huge beast. As the
Wavecrest gained upon it the monster was revealed, lying partly on its
side, all of fifty feet from tail to nose. Of course there were no
seabirds upon the carcass now, nor did I see the triangular fin of a
shark anywhere about. They had ripped and torn at the carcass
sufficiently, however, to release copiously the oil from the casing of
blubber, or fat, with which the whale is entirely covered.

My Wavecrest bore down upon the becalmed circle and suddenly I found