I made some noise in crawling out. Mr. Brown turned his head and smiled at me, but said nothing. I took that as a sort of an invitation. I got up and stood beside him, and we looked out together over that desolate waste of heaving gray water, with the white tops of breaking seas, and a faint touch of light here and there, and gray clouds driving over, but no color yet. I was oppressed with that feeling of melancholy and loneliness—and littleness—which always seized me at such a time. I think Mr. Brown felt it too. I looked around me, and saw two men evidently just awake, and the Prince standing like a statue, silent and dignified, gazing at the east. I could not help wondering afresh what he was in his own country, and what was his own country. Whatever country it was, he ought to have been a chief in it—_princeps_—instead of being no more than a boatsteerer on a whaler, and the associate of men few of whom were his equals. If it had been the fashion to be black, instead of white, even the officers, excepting Mr. Brown and Mr. Macy, would have been his acknowledged inferiors. There was no sign of the Battles or of the Clearchus—nothing within our horizon but the wide ocean, deep indigo in the distance, with great seas rolling and tumbling, dark green near the boat, their tops a ghastly white. After an hour or two my heart began to sink. How could it be expected that anybody would find us, a speck in that vast and dreary expanse of ocean? Mr. Brown seemed confident enough, but my heart had sunk down into my soaked boots when, in the middle of the forenoon, he spoke to me. No doubt he guessed my feelings. They may have been evident enough. “See there, Tim; almost abeam of us.” We were streaming out to the northwest behind the {188} whale. I looked, but I could see nothing but the tops of distant seas rising and falling. I shook my head. “Can’t you make it out? Three stubby topmasts, almost in line, and the to’gallan’yards? If you knew them as well as I do—” “The Clearchus?” He nodded. “I think so. I ’m pretty sure.” He was right, as he was apt to be. Mr. Baker had seen it too. The Clearchus picked us up before noon, got the whale alongside, and began to cut-in at once, rough and blowing as it was. She had been caught by the blow with Mr. Macy’s whale alongside. They saw the blow coming, and tried to save the case, but they did not succeed, and the whale broke adrift, taking some of our tackle with it. They had to cut and run for it. We never saw that whale again. It moderated toward the middle of the afternoon, and by the time we were ready to try out, we had a clear sky and a gentle breeze. {189} CHAPTER XIX