Although that whale had not nearly had his spoutings out, he stayed down over an hour. Mr. Tilton stood by, his line bent to the end of ours, but Mr. Baker would not give up the whale until he had to. When the whale rose at last, he did not come up with a rush, on a breach, or half-breach, but he floated up, and came to the surface like an old waterlogged timber, plainly exhausted. There was nothing for Mr. Baker to do but to pull up and lance him at his leisure. Within ten minutes the whale was in his flurry, and in a short time after he was fast alongside the {320} ship. Mr. Baker estimated him at eighty barrels, but by hard work we had him cut-in and on board by dark, and the carcass cut adrift. It was now past the middle of the season, and we put into Wellington to fill our water-casks, to give the men a run ashore, and to get our mail. There was no mail for me, but I sent home another instalment of my journal, and I saw the town, which had little interest for me. There was only one town which I cared about seeing, and that was more than a year away, almost exactly on the other side of the world. I had a great desire to see at least one of the Marquesas Islands, but Wellington is not the Marquesas. When we got back to our cruising grounds, whales were getting scarce and wild and difficult of approach. The big whales seemed to have gone. We did get one forty-barrel bull, one of a small school that was running to leeward from another ship. We saw the ship in the distance, and we saw her boats; but the whales were running faster than the boats could go. Our one bull we intercepted, but the rest ran away from us, straight to leeward, head out. It was useless to chase them. The strange boats did not get nearer to us than a mile and a half; then they gave it up, and went back to their ship, which bore away to the southward without an attempt to speak us. Captain Nelson must have made up his mind very suddenly to get out of those waters. As soon as the trying-out of the forty-barrel bull was finished we stood away to the northward, for the Ellices, Gilberts, and Kingsmill; but most of all, I thought, to find those mysterious grounds where the Apollo had filled up. Just after we had filled away, Peter found me, and pointed in silence to the horizon. There was a faint haze, but I made out a pair of topmasts, with yards on them. “A brig?” I asked, with but faint interest. “A schooner,” Peter answered. “I saw her from aloft.” {321} It dawned upon me then; it was the Battles, going the same way we were. I watched her draw away from us. Then I saw Captain Coffin watching, too. {322} CHAPTER XXXIII