cool, I told myself that even if I was
frightened I must not go all to pieces, but compel myself to think and
act calmly, since I was responsible for others. If the animal had
not been in so blind a fury, I am afraid my task would have been much
harder; but he was mad, and his savage rushes were, though disquieting,
unsystematic and clumsy. It was essential, however, that he should not
be allowed to persist too long in his evil courses; for a whale learns
with amazing rapidity, developing such cunning in an hour or two that
all a man's smartness may be unable to cope with his newly acquired
experience. Happily, Samuela was perfectly unmoved. Like a machine, he
obeyed every gesture, every look even, swinging the boat "off" or "on"
the whale with such sweeping strokes of his mighty oar that she revolved
as if on a pivot, and encouraging the other chaps with his cheerful
cries and odd grimaces, so that the danger was hardly felt. During a
momentary lull in the storm, I took the opportunity to load my bomb-gun,
much as I disliked handling the thing, keeping my eye all the time
on the water around where I expected to see mine enemy popping up
murderously at any minute. Just as I had expected, when he rose, it was
very close, and on his back, with his jaw in the first biting position,
looking ugly as a vision of death. Finding us a little out of reach,
he rolled right over towards us, presenting as he did so the great
rotundity of his belly. We were not twenty feet away, and I snatched up
the gun, levelled it, and fired the bomb point-blank into his bowels.
Then all was blank. I do not even remember the next moment. A rush of
roaring waters, a fighting with fearful, desperate energy for air and
life, all in a hurried, flurried phantasmagoria about which there was
nothing clear except the primitive desire for life, life, life! Nor do
I know how long this struggle lasted, except that, in the nature of
things, it could not have been very long.

When I returned to a consciousness of external things, I was for some
time perfectly still, looking at the sky, totally unable to realize what
had happened or where I was. Presently the smiling, pleasant face of
Samuel bent over me. Meeting my gratified look of recognition, he set up
a perfect yell of delight. "So glad, so glad you blonga life! No go Davy
Jonesy dis time, hay?" I put my hand out to help myself to a sitting
posture, and touched blubber. That startled me so that I sprung up