“Getting ready to ride it out, Tim,” he said, smiling kindly. We had nothing to do, having fifteen or twenty fathoms of line out, and he was leaning against the cleat, watching. “A whale ’s a ready made sea-anchor, if he only stays afloat; and I guess he will. And we shall be in his lee, where the seas won’t be quite so high—although there ’s not much of the carcass showing.” I turned and looked at the whale doubtfully. “I should think, sir,” I ventured, “that Mr. Baker might foul us, or we him, if he has about the same length of line that we have.” “No,” Mr. Brown replied, smiling again. “A drifting {184} body always drifts broadside to the wind—to the resistance. I could prove that to you by mathematics if we had the chance, and if I had n’t forgotten the proof. But experience proves the proof to be correct, which is much more convincing than mere mathematics. You notice.” I nodded. “Yes, sir, I will, if—” Mr. Brown laughed. “If we get out of this, eh? We shall. Make your mind easy.” The carcass of the whale was lying nearly east and west under the northerly wind. As the squall—pampero or whatever it was—advanced, the wind dropped, until we were heaving on an oily swell in a flat calm. The men in Mr. Baker’s boat took that chance of backing water, and of working the body of the whale slowly around until it lay very nearly north and south, while the squall was coming from the southwest. Then there was nothing to do but to watch the clouds, and to wait for the wind to strike. The edge of the cloud seemed to be directly over us, writhing and twisting, and it was almost as dark as night. “There she comes,” said Mr. Brown quietly; and I saw what seemed a blank wall of mist, with the black cloud above. We could see it some miles away, and it was coming fast. “Fog, sir?” I asked, puzzled. “Rain, and hail, probably, and wind,” said Mr. Brown. As it came on I could see the line of rain and hail, as sharp as the cut side of a cheese; and there was a queer foaming commotion in the water at the foot of the advancing wall. It had got almost to the carcass of the whale before we felt the first cold puffs of air. Those first cold puffs were from every direction, some straight up; and the foaming commotion in the water resolved itself into an infinite series of small geysers, from one to two feet high, like columns of water sent up by explosions of shells, such as I have seen many times in the last few years when the Fort has been at target practice. At a distance of six {185} or seven miles, even through a powerful glass, they look no higher than these did.