I stirred myself when the boats were alongside, giving myself a shake, I remember, and waking from the trance I had been in. I do not know how I got down, but I must have thrown my legs over the edge of the crosstrees and found the ratlines on the futtock shrouds with my feet like any old hand, for I was concerned only with reaching the deck as soon as possible. Mr. Brown’s crew were just coming over the side as my feet struck the deck. I rushed at Aziel Wright, the boatsteerer, and shot a fusillade of questions at him, for I was worried about Mr. Baker’s boat and Peter. The boat and her crew seemed to me to be as good as lost, well out of sight beyond the rim of the sea, and going strong. Wright paid no attention to me until the boat was up to the davits and the wooden brackets swung out under her keel. {62} When the boat was up and secure, Wright turned to me. He was a tall, lanky man, and he could not have been over thirty, although he seemed older. He had a little hacking cough, and seemed chronically tired; but he was pleasant, and already a good friend of mine. “What is it, Tim?” he asked. “Mr. Baker’s boat? Oh, they ’re all right. We ’re running down after them now. We may sight them any time now, or it may be dark before we find them.” “But,” I objected, “the whale was going faster than the ship. He ’d take them—” Wright laughed. “True enough. There ’s no telling where he ’d take them if he kept it up, for he was making a good ten knots, and the ship is n’t making more ’n five or six. But he can’t keep it up a great while—twenty mile or so. We ’ll sight them, it ’s likely, in a few hours.” “And will the whale fight when—” “When he stops running?” Wright finished for me. “Can’t say, but ’t is n’t likely, for he ’ll be tired. But you never can tell what a whale ’ll do.” I was not wholly satisfied. “If we don’t see them before dark, how will we find them?” “Flares,” said Wright briefly. Then, seeing that I was mystified, he proceeded to explain. I suppose he thought that he made the matter as clear as daylight. “They ’ll burn flares now and then, and we ’ll see one of ’em, maybe more, and we ’ll run down and pick her up.” I nodded, and thanked him. There was nothing else that I knew enough to ask him, although I was still unsatisfied, and I ran below to get it all down in my journal. At the time I made mere notes, in a fragmentary way, while my impressions were fresh. I wrote up the notes later. I have that journal by me now. As I look over the scrawled and stained pages, and read the disjointed sentences, the whole thing comes back before me as if it had happened yesterday. I sent the journal home from time to {63} time, as I had planned to do, as long as I had opportunities, and managed to carry home the part covering the last part of my cruise. My father and my mother preserved my old journal as if it were a precious thing. I found it nearly thirty years later with my father’s most valuable papers. {64} CHAPTER VII