That must have been just what this whale did, as it turned out, for he rose soon after, about a quarter of a mile away, and made off just a little faster than the boats could go, although we tried hard. The drug appeared some minutes after the whale had shown himself, and went skittering off after him, jumping from sea to sea, or from one side to the other, tantalizingly near. Both boats followed it. It did not go very much faster than we did, pulling our hearts out for an hour dead to windward; but it gained on us very slowly, and we gave it up at last, and lay on our oars, while we watched that drug flash in the sun, farther and farther away. It flashed its last, and we turned and pulled back to the ship, leaving the whale in possession of two good harpoons, almost two hundred fathoms of nearly new whale line, and a perfectly good drug, a work of art. I hoped he would enjoy their use. We never heard anything more of any of them. Possibly, even now, there is a whale, fairly old, swimming the seas somewhere, with an old rusty harpoon {226} encysted in his shoulder, the remains of a frayed old line trailing from it, fringed with green or brown trailing weed along its whole length, encrusted with barnacles, and alive with little crabs and sea-horses. I am confident that he has never been taken. After our exploit with that whale we cruised to the eastward to the north of Mauritius, but did not raise a spout. Captain Nelson seemed to have made up his mind that there were no more whales to be found in those waters, for he stood away to the northwest, for the northern end of Madagascar. We passed within sight of it, but did not stop. There was a good deal of speculation among the crew as to where we were going, for although the mastheads were kept manned, the routine of cruising grounds was abandoned, and the Clearchus was under a press of sail for a whaler. The men insisted that she was bound for some definite port on the east coast, and when we had passed Madagascar, and the course was changed by a point or so, many of them said that it was Zanzibar. In the forecastle they had long disputes upon the matter, and I listened, but took no part in them. I was often there.