This might have appeared strange to the Catamarans, and led them to
believe that it was, in reality, a phantom ship they were hailing, and
the gigantic figures they saw were those of spectres instead of men.

But the experience of the ex-whalesman forbade any such belief. He knew
the ship to be a whaler, the moving forms to be men,--her crew,--and he
knew, moreover, the reason why these had not answered his hail. They
had not heard it. The roaring of the great furnace fires either drowned
or deadened _every_ other sound; even the voices of the whalesmen
themselves, as they stood close to each other.

Ben Brace remembered all this; and the thought that the ship might pass
them, unheard and unheeded, filled his mind with dread apprehension.

But for a circumstance in their favour this might have been the
lamentable result. Fortunately, however, there was a circumstance that
led to a more happy termination of that chance encounter of the two
strange crafts,--the _Catamaran_ and the whale-ship.

The latter, engaged, as appearances indicated, in the process of
"trying-out" the blubber of some whale lately harpooned, was "laying-to"
against the wind; and, of course not making much way, nor caring to make
it, through the water.

As she was coming up slowly, her head set almost "into the wind's eye,"
the Catamarans, well to windward, would have no difficulty in getting
their craft close up to her.

The sailor was not slow in perceiving their advantageous position; and
as soon as he became satisfied that the distance was too great for their
hail to be heard, he sprang to the steering-oar, turned the helm "hard a
port," and set his craft's head on towards the whaler, as if determined
to run her down.

In a few seconds the raft was surging along within a cable's length of
the whaler's bows, when the cry of "Ship ahoy!" was once more raised by
both Snowball and the sailor. Though the hail was heard, the reply was
not instantaneous; for the crew of the whale-ship, guided by the shouts
of those on the raft, had looked forth upon the illumined water, and,
seeing such a strange embarkation right under their bows, were for some
moments silent through sheer surprise.

The ex-whalesman, however, soon made himself intelligible, and in ten
minutes after the crew of the _Catamaran_, instead of shivering in wet
clothes, with hungry stomachs to make them still more miserable, might
have been seen standing in front of an immense