At last the battle for life ended in a batter of coloured seas. We
saw the writhing neck fall like a flail, the carcase turn sideways,
showing the glint of a white belly and the inset of a gigantic hind
leg or flipper. Then all sank, and sea boiled over it, while the
mate swam round and round, darting her head in every direction.
Though we might have feared that she would attack the steamer, no
power on earth could have drawn any one of us from our places that
hour. We watched, holding our breaths. The mate paused in her search;
we could hear the wash beating along her sides; reared her neck as
high as she could reach, blind and lonely in all that loneliness of
the sea, and sent one desperate bellow booming across the swells as
an oyster-shell skips across a pond. Then she made off to the
westward, the sun shining on the white head and the wake behind it,
till nothing was left to see but a little pin point of silver on the
horizon. We stood on our course again; and the _Rathmines_, coated
with the sea-sediment from bow to stern, looked like a ship made gray
with terror.

* * * * *

'We must pool our notes,' was the first coherent remark from Keller.
'We're three trained journalists--we hold absolutely the biggest
scoop on record. Start fair.'

I objected to this. Nothing is gained by collaboration in journalism
when all deal with the same facts, so we went to work each according
to his own lights. Keller triple-headed his account, talked about our
'gallant captain,' and wound up with an allusion to American
enterprise in that it was a citizen of Dayton, Ohio, that had seen