The men threw every ounce of power into each stroke, the voice of the
boatswain blending with their efforts like an intoned benediction, and
the treacly sea foamed under the prow into drifted snow which ran merrily
in their wake. For a tense moment the boat hung poised upon a high
roller, as if about to be projected into the air, and the man in the
prow, electrified, threw out an arm with a dramatic gesture. The
instincts of the ex-whaler triumphed in that moment of excitement.

'There she blows!'

Instantly Coleman fell into a condition of profound agitation; he poured
out a lava-flow of vituperation upon the heads of his men; he cursed them
for weaklings and waster and hissed phrases shameful to them and
discreditable to their parents. The crew increased their stroke. Already
the perspiration was streaming from their indurated hides; their wet
faces and breasts glistened in the night. Every now and again the
look-out, discovering a black spot where the moon's rays splashed a
smooth-backed wave with silver, uttered an inarticulate cry that struck
the men like a spur, and all the time his pointing hand was a finger-post
to the steersman.

Meanwhile the object of this chase, a fragile, white-faced girl, had
fought with the mammoth waves as with inveterate beasts seeking to stifle
her in icy embraces. A mere atom plunged in their depths as in cavernous
and boundless darkness, she had struggled with an ocean the whole of the
focus of which were leagued against her, possessed all the time with a
foolish and trivial remembrance of child hood, the vision of a little
gray kitten, with a weight about its neck, striving to beat its way up
through clear waters, sending out tiny bubbles of crystal that danced in