Every man braced himself for the shock. Henrik Gjertsen, the sailor at the wheel, spread his legs, crouched down, and stiffened his shoulders and arms to hand-grips on opposite spokes of the wheel. Several of the crew fled from the waist to the poop, and others of them sprang into the main-rigging. Daughtry, one hand on the rail, with his free arm clasped the Ancient Mariner around the waist. All held. The whale struck the _Mary Turner_ just aft of the fore-shroud. A score of things, which no eye could take in simultaneously, happened. A sailor, in the main rigging, carried away a ratline in both hands, fell head-downward, and was clutched by an ankle and saved head-downward by a comrade, as the schooner cracked and shuddered, uplifted on the port side, and was flung down on her starboard side till the ocean poured level over her rail. Michael, on the smooth roof of the cabin, slithered down the steep slope to starboard and disappeared, clawing and snarling, into the runway. The port shrouds of the foremast carried away at the chain-plates, and the fore-topmast leaned over drunkenly to starboard. "My word," quoth the Ancient Mariner. "We certainly felt that." "Mr. Jackson," Captain Doane commanded the mate, "will you sound the well." The mate obeyed, although he kept an anxious eye on the whale, which had gone off at a tangent and was smoking away to the eastward. "You see, that's what you get," Grimshaw snarled at Nishikanta. Nishikanta nodded, as he wiped the sweat away, and muttered, "And I'm satisfied. I got all I want. I didn't think a whale had it in it. I'll never do it again." "Maybe you'll never have the chance," the captain retorted. "We're not done with this one yet. The one that charged the _Essex_ made charge after charge, and I guess whale nature hasn't changed any in the last few years." "Dry as a bone, sir," Mr. Jackson reported the result of his sounding. "There she turns," Daughtry called out. Half a mile away, the whale circled about sharply and charged back. "Stand from under for'ard there!" Captain Doane shouted to one of the sailors who had just emerged from the forecastle scuttle, sea-bag in hand, and over whom the fore-topmast was swaying giddily. "He's packed for the get-away," Daughtry murmured to the Ancient Mariner. "Like a rat leaving a ship." "We're all rats," was the reply. "I learned just that when I was a rat among the mangy rats of the poor-farm." By this time, all men on board had communicated to Michael their contagion of excitement and fear. Back on top of the cabin so that he might see, he snarled at the cow whale when the men seized fresh grips against the impending shock and when he saw her close at hand and oncoming.