and poured away in sluices. The blind white head flung back and
battered the wounds, and the body in its torment rose clear of the
red and gray waves till we saw a pair of quivering shoulders streaked
with weed and rough with shells, but as white in the clear spaces as
the hairless, maneless, blind, toothless head. Afterwards, came a dot
on the horizon and the sound of a shrill scream, and it was as though
a shuttle shot all across the sea in one breath, and a second head
and neck tore through the levels, driving a whispering wall of water
to right and left. The two Things met--the one untouched and the
other in its death-throe--male and female, we said, the female
coming to the male. She circled round him bellowing, and laid her
neck across the curve of his great turtle-back, and he disappeared
under water for an instant, but flung up again, grunting in agony
while the blood ran. Once the entire head and neck shot clear of the
water and stiffened, and I heard Keller saying, as though he was
watching a street accident, 'Give him air. For God's sake, give him
air.' Then the death-struggle began, with crampings and twistings and
jerkings of the white bulk to and fro, till our little steamer rolled
again, and each gray wave coated her plates with the gray slime. The
sun was clear, there was no wind, and we watched, the whole
crew, stokers and all, in wonder and pity, but chiefly pity. The
Thing was so helpless, and, save for his mate, so alone. No human eye
should have beheld him; it was monstrous and indecent to exhibit him
there in trade waters between atlas degrees of latitude. He had been
spewed up, mangled and dying, from his rest on the sea-floor, where
he might have lived till the Judgment Day, and we saw the tides of
his life go from him as an angry tide goes out across rocks in the
teeth of a landward gale. His mate lay rocking on the water a little
distance off, bellowing continually, and the smell of musk came dawn
upon the ship making us cough.