Part 9 (2/2)

She swallowed the harbour and spit it out. She whooped and danced and teetered. She let out all her primeval feelings. She put on no airs, and she made no pretences. She turned everything she could find into scrambled eggs, and played the ”Ma.r.s.eillaise” on her blow-hole. She did herself up into knots to break whalebone, and untied them like a pop of a cork. She was no more female than she was science. She was wrath and earthquakes and the day of judgment. She scooped out the bottom of the harbour and laid it on top, and turned somersets through the middle of chaos. Veronica took to the woods. I ran along the north sh.o.r.e, thinking they were both scrambled, but I found Kamelillo pulling Kreps through the shallows by his collar, and shaking the water out of his eyes, and not seeming to be disturbed. But Kreps took off his spectacles and wiped them, and he says:

”Ach, Liebchen!” he says. ”She iss too much.”

”Thas whale!” says Kamelillo. ”Thas all right!”

”Liebchen iss too much of her,” says Kreps very dignified, and stalked to the camp.

”Thas whale!” says Kamelillo. ”Thas all right!”

He chopped the jam that afternoon, and it floated out in the night or early morning with the ebb. We went to the bank when the tide was in again to watch Liebchen go out. Kreps was pretty tearful.

”Aber,” he says, ”she iss too much of her.”

She came feeling her way through the channel with her snout under water.

Kamelillo's bamboo stuck out of her fat side six feet or more. Veronica cackled at her, and her feathers stood up, so that you could see she thought Liebchen was no lady. Liebchen pa.s.sed close beneath us. Seemed like she felt mortified. Kreps broke down, but Kamelillo was gay.

”Dam hen!” he says, and grabbed Veronica with both hands. ”Go too!” and he flung her at Liebchen, and she went through the air squawking and fluttering. She lit on Liebchen's slippery back, and she slid till she struck the bamboo, and roosted. If she had had time to think she might have flopped ash.o.r.e, but she was fl.u.s.tered, and Liebchen got out of the channel and steered into the Pacific. Veronica squawked a few times, and no more. The sea was quiet. The two moved off, going eastward very slow. Kamelillo went back to his camp fire and made poi, but Kreps and I watched, expecting that Liebchen would go under and Veronica be lost.

But they kept on till there was only a black spot near the edge of the sky.

It came on afternoon. The tide was out, and we lay about. There was not enough wind to flutter the signal on the bluffs, which was Kreps' red s.h.i.+rt, and hung there to entertain any one that might come by. Kamelillo suddenly sat up. ”Hear im?” he says.

There was a great noise over in the channel out of sight, a kind of splas.h.i.+ng, thumping, and blowing, and the waves rolled into the harbour.

We ran along the sh.o.r.e and came to the bluffs. There was Liebchen! She appeared to have grounded in the channel, trying to get in quick at low tide. But there were two harpoons, more than the bamboo, sticking in her very deep, and the lines were hitched to a longboat, the longboat coming insh.o.r.e now full of men. Veronica squatting on the thwart of the same, comfortable and dignified.

Kamelillo says, ”Whale ain't got sense, thas whale!” And Kreps says, ”Ach, Liebchen!”

She struck her last flurry, and filled the air with spray. The longboat held off, seeing she was likely to stay there and needed all the room.

After a while she grew quiet. A few motions of her flukes, and that was all. The longboat came in, and we slid down the bluffs. The man in the stern says, ”That your hen?”

I said I was acquainted with her.

”Oh! Maybe that's your whale?”

”Ach, Liebchen!” says Kreps.

Kamelillo waded in, and looked at the harpoons, and shook his head, for he knew the laws and rights of the trade.

”No,” he says. ”Thas your whale.”

”Been cast up, have ye?” says the steersman, looking around. ”We struck that whale ten miles out. We comes up quiet, and I see that bamboo sticking in her, with that hen squatting on it. 'Queer!' says I. And just as Billy here was letting her have it, the hen gives a squawk and comes flopping aboard; and Billy lets her have it, and d.i.c.k here lets her have it, and she goes plumb down sudden. Then up she comes and starts, like she was going to see her Ma and knew her own mind, and up this channel she comes, and runs aground foolish. I never see a whale act so foolish. Thought she might be a friend of yours,” says he, ”meaning no reflections.”

I said I was acquainted with her, and Kreps took off his gla.s.ses and wiped his eyes.

”She va.s.s of de tenderness, das Zartlichkeit.” It made him sad to see Liebchen dead, that was full of sensibility, and Veronica come back with dignity, she being a conventional hen and scornful and cold by nature.

”Ach, Liebchen!” he says; and we went back to gather up his tin cans; and I says:

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