fire, with an ample
supply of wholesome food set before them, and surrounded by a score of
rude but honest men, each trying to excel the other in contributing to
their comfort.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED.

THE END OF THE "YARN."

Ocean Waifs no longer, the crew of the _Catamaran_ became embodied with
that of the ship, and her little passenger found kindness and protection
in the cabin of the whaler.

The _Catamaran_ herself was not "cut loose" in the nautical sense of the
term, and abandoned, but she was cut loose in a literal sense, and in
pieces hoisted aboard the ship to be employed for various purposes,--her
ropes, spars, and sail to be used at some time as they had been
originally intended--her other timbers to go to the stock of the
carpenter, and her casks to the cooper, to be eventually filled with the
precious sperm-oil which the ship's crew were engaged in trying out.

The old whalesman was not long aboard before getting confirmed in his
conjecture that the ship was the same whose boats had harpooned and
"drogued" the _cachalot_, the carcass of which had been encountered by
the _Catamaran_. It was one of a large "pod" of whales, of which the
boats had been in pursuit, and these, along with the ship, having
followed its companions to a great distance, and killed several of them
in the chase, had lost all bearings of the one first struck.

It had been their intention to go in search of it, as soon as they
should try out the others that had been captured; and the information
now given by Ben Brace to the captain of the whaler would enable the
latter the more easily to discover the lost prize, which he estimated at
the value of seventy or eighty barrels of oil, and therefore well worth
the trouble of going back for. On the day after the castaways had been
taken aboard, the whale-ship, having extinguished the fires of her
try-works, started in search of the drogued whale.

The ex-crew of the _Catamaran_ had by this time given a full account of
their adventures to the whalesmen; at the same time expressing their
belief that the ruffians on the big raft would be found by the carcass
they were in search of. The prospect of such an encounter could not
fail to interest the crew of the whaler; and as they advanced in the
direction in which they expected to find the drogued _cachalot_, all
eyes were bent searchingly upon the sea.

So far as the dead whale was concerned, they were successful in their
search. Ju