board. Any water in it?" says he.

"Yes, sir," says I.

"Thank God for the same then," says he.

But whilst they were manoeuvring with the cask the breeze freshened in
a sudden squall, and all in a minute, as it seemed, a sort of sloppy
sea was set a-running. The captain looked anxious, yet still seemed
willing that the boat should go to the wreck. I sent some Lascars
aloft to furl the loose canvas, and whilst this was doing, the wind
freshened yet in another long-drawn blast that swept in a shriek
betwixt our masts.

"There's nothing to be done!" sung out the skipper; "get that boat
under the fall, Jackson; we must hoist her up."

The darkeys lay aft to the tackles, and Jackson climbed over the rail
with a countenance sour and mutinous with disappointment. He had
scarcely sprung on to the deck, when we heard a loud crash like the
report of a small piece of ordnance, and, looking towards the hulks, I
was just in time to see them sliding off the back of the whale, one on
either side of the greasy, black surface. They vanished in a breath,
and the dead carcass, relieved of their weight, seemed to spring, as
though it were alive, some ten or twelve feet out of the seething and
simmering surface which had been frothed up by the descent of the
vessels; the next moment it turned over and gave us a view of its
whole length--a sixty to seventy-foot whale, if the carcass was an
inch, with here and there the black scythe-like dorsal fin of a shark
sailing round it.

Jackson hooked a quid out of his mouth and sent it overboard. His face
of mutiny left him, and was replaced by an expression of gratitude.
Five minutes later the old _Hindoo Merchant_ was thrusting through it
with her nose heading for the river Hooghley, and the darkeys tying a
single reef in the foretopsail.

_The Strange Tragedy
of the "White Star_."

It is proper I should state at once that the names I give in this
extraordinary experience are fictitious; the date of the tale is
easily within the memory of the middle-aged.

The large, well-known Australian liner _White Star_ lay off the
wool-sheds in Sydney harbour slowly filling up with wool; I say slowly,
for the oxen were languid up-country, and the stuff came in as Fox is
said to have written his history--"drop by drop." We were, however,
advertised to sail in a fortnight from the day I open this story on,
and there was no doubt of our gettin