"It is bad luck, kaptan," said the voice of his first-mate behind him. The man, who had just come on deck from his bunk, spoke sadly and respectfully. Kaptan Andersen wheeled round. "What is bad luck?" he asked sharply. Then he laughed pleasantly. "You have broken your coffee-mug again, Holar; that is the trouble."

Holar shook his head. He was a big man, looking much older than his years, and melancholy of countenance; often he seemed to be brooding over some tremendous disappointment.

"I have broken nothing, kaptan," he said slowly. "Neither have I been dreaming dreams. But I tell you it is bad luck to get news of a cachalot from Kaptan Bjornsen of the Ole Bull."

"So you have heard about the cachalot. Well, Holar, I say to you that any news of a cachalot, when we have been a week without even a sej-hval, is good luck; and when we have killed our cachalot you will also "

"Kaptan," said the other solemnly, "you will not hunt this cachalot?"

Andersen stared at his mate. "What foolish talk is this, Holar, about bad luck and Kaptan Bjornsen?" he demanded impatiently. He was sorry for the older man, to whom he had allowed considerable latitude of speech In the past; but this was going too far. "What kind of talk is this from you to me?"

The mate's gloomy gray eyes looked straight into the captain's angry blue

ones.

"It is for your sake, kaptan, that I speak what you call foolishness," said Holar quietly. "Will you listen, kaptan?"

"What is it?" Andersen rapped out. His eyes were now turned to the sea ahead.

"You have heard," began the mate in a low voice, "that I also was once a kaptan of a whaler?"

"I have heard, Holar," said Andersen more gently. "You had bad luck when you were hunting from Finmarken. Was it not so?"

"It was bad luck," continued the mate "bad luck such as has never happened to a Norsk whaler since old Svend Foyn showed us how to take the great blaa-hral with the bomb-harpoon from the little steamer. My steamer, the Ulf, was sunk by a whale that I had struck and made fast.” "I know it, Holar."

"Every one in Norge knows it, for such a thing never happened before or since. But every one does not know that the whale the last whale I hunted, I who have killed hundreds -the whale was a cachalot."

"Ah!" said Andersen, "I had not heard that."

"It was twelve years ago."

"So you think it is unlucky to strike a cachalot, Holar," said the captain, suppressing a smile. "A goodly number of cachalots have been safely taken since then, and nearly all from the small boats."

"The ill-luck is not in the cachalot, but in the way the cachalot is found Listen, kaptan. Twelve years ago I was cruising for blaa-hval and fin-hval and Nordkappers, and getting few of any. And on a night such as this a steamer going to Tronsö came a little out of her course to tell me about a cachalot-a big bull-that was not four miles away. The steamer was the Helga."

"Not the Ole Bull,” said Andersen, turning to him with a light laugh.

"No; but the Helga's kaptan was Kaptan Bjornsen, now of the Olo Bull."

The captain of the Gisli uttered an exclamation. "That is queer, Holar," he admitted presently; "but it means nothing."

"Nothing but bad luck," said the mate stolidly.

"For me?" asked Andersen with a short laugh.

"For you, kaptan. There is no luck for me now-neither bad nor good," Holar muttered sadly. "But I would not that you should ever be as I. It is not good to be second after one has been first. It is not good to see another fire the gun. It is hell. And so I beg you, kaptan-you who have forgiven me much and been patient-to let this cursed

99

"Hral! Hval!" came the alarm from the man in the crow's nest.

Kaptan Andersen gave a shout of satisfaction. The whale, however, had risen far away, and the chase, in the meantime, would be directed from the masthead.

"Let him go. kaptan; let him go!" the mate pleaded. "Do not risk everything."

Once more Andersen laughed. It is doubtless the very cachalot that sank the Ulf, my good Holar," he said jestingly.

"It is no other," said the mate in a hoarse whisper.

Somehow Andersen did not laugh this time. He was afraid of no whale in the sea, but he was troubled about his mate. Was the latter getting a little mad?

"It is surely a strange happening," he said after a pause. "But how do you know it is the same cachalot? is likely that your cachalot died in the Arctic."

It

"I shot him badly-too near the tail. He got a coil of the cable round his flukes, and the cable went snap as if It had been wool. Then he went mad and came for the Ulf. Nej, kaptan, he lives yet; and there is now a devil in him that entered with my harpoon. Let him go, kaptan; let him swim away to the south, to his--"

"How can you tell he is the same?" Andersen Interrupted irritably. "How would you know-"

"On the crown of his great head there is a large, whitish blotch. It is like the map of Island [Iceland] on the chart, the shape of it."

"Good!" said Andersen. "I will look for it when the time comes," he added firmly.

"And you will find it, kaptan," returned the other in a dull voice. Не perceived that nothing he could say would move the young man from his purpose, and he turned away, for it was time to relieve the man at the wheel.

"Stay!" the captain called, his voice gentle again.

Holar halted.

"See here, my good Holar," said the captain. "Suppose that yonder cachalot is really your old enemy. What then? Has not the day come for your revenge? Think of that, and cheer up!"

"My revenge! What have I to do with it?" asked the mate moodily. Andersen flushed with anger, and turned again to the gun. It was not his fault that Holar was serving in a secondary position. It had always been a trial, his shipboard relation with a mate old enough to be his father. He had borne with the old man for three seasons, but he was coming to the end of his patience. Holar, with his grievance that insinuated itself into half of his conversation, was becoming unbearable.

And now Kaptan Andersen thought he saw through the old man and his cry of "bad luck.” The old man had pretended that his anxiety was all for his skipper and his skipper's reputation. So! And what would the old man do if he were suddenly put in the skipper's place? Would he let the cachalot go? Andersen muttered a curse or two, reviling himself for his previous indulgence to his mate. And an ugly question leapt up in his mind: could he even trust Holar in the steer

ing-box when the Gisli and the cachalot came to close quarters?

He looked behind him, but the mate had gone aft. A couple of sailors were standing at their posts beside the winches carrying the cables, to one of which was attached the harpoon. But he did not send a sailor for the mate, as he thought of first doing. The Gisli was still far from the cachalot; she was taking a curved course that would eventually, if the lookout's calculations were correct, bring her close and at right angles to the whale's line of progress and somewhat in advance of the whale, there to await his approach. There was, therefore, no immediate need for the gun.

Kaptan Andersen went aft. In the steering-box he found the second-mate, who informed him that Holar had gone below, promising to return to take charge in a few minutes. At this Andersen's resentment was not lessened. The old man had taken one liberty too many. What could he be doing below at such a time?

The young man went into the tiny deck-house and quietly descended the narrow stair. At the last step he halted and peeped into the cabin.

The mate was sitting on his locker, crouching over the table, his face bowed on his arms.

"Holar," said Andersen sternly, "are you asleep? It is time for you to take the wheel."

With a start the mate rose, squeezed past the captain without look or word, and climbed the stair.

Andersen entered the cabin, feeling uneasy. A crumpled, closely and badly written letter was lying on the locker. He picked it up, and ere he knew what he was doing these words were ringing in his mind: "You must not give up hope, dear husband. Would not the young kaptan who is so kind speak for you to the company?"

Andersen dropped the letter and sat down on the locker. His wrath died; pity rose again. He began to understand something of what the ex-captain must have suffered during his twelve years' mateship; something of what the old woman at home must have endured as year after year went past without restoring her husband to the position that had seemed so grand to them both. And twelve years without firing a harpoon! Perhaps that appealed to the young gunner more than did anything else in the tragedy. Twelve years' blank on the top of. perhaps, twenty years' full existence, for Holar had been a famous gunner in his day.

The

second-mate summoned him, and he hurried on deck.

"Take the wheel, and send Holar to me," he said briefly, and went forward to the gun. The unsuspecting cachalot. after a long submersion, was coming leisurely towards the Gisli, and would most probably cross her bows,

The captain signalled with his band for "dead slow."

Presently Holar stood beside him. The old man was trembling.

"You mean to strike him, kaptan?" he whispered.

Andersen nodded. "How could I go back to the station and tell them I had let a cachalot go from under my gun? Are you afraid, Holar?"

"For you, kaptan. You will lose your ship."

Andersen bit off an oath. The old man's croaking was maddening.

The whale came nearer, and sud

two small boats belonging to the Gisli, and shrank from the thought of risking his inexperienced men in them alongside an infuriated whale. It was a rare experience indeed to use the lance in rorqual-hunting-so rare that little or no provision was made for such an emergency. Andersen remembered that, a year before, three men belonging to an Iceland station had left the whaler to lance a wounded blaa-hval and had not returned. It almost seemed as if the "bad luck" had come after all, and he could only hope that by some happy chance the bomb might yet explode, or that Holar, who was already reloading the gun, might somehow get a second shot home.

Two hours had passed, but the cachalot, though slower in his movements, was far from being exhausted. Several times, too, he had just missed getting a kink of cable round his tail, which would have ended matters so far as the company was concerned.

Forwards and backwards ran the wheels, as the cable was let out or hauled in, and once the Gisli was sent "full astern" to overcome a sudden slackening.

Holar's eyes had become feverishly alert, but the color had not returned to his face. The crisis had yet to come. He knew it. He dared not leave his post for a moment, otherwise he would have run aft to whisper a single sentence to the captain: "Kaptan, it is for you more than for myself."

Of a sudden the cachalot sounded. "Steady!" muttered Holar to the men at the winch, who were ready to let out more cable. "Hold on!"

He pressed his foot on the cableonce twice-thrice.

"Full ahead! Hard astarboard!" he yelled.

Beneath his foot the cable became elastic, then easy to bend.

The deck quivered as the Gisli shot forward in a curve, the cable trailing from her port bow as though she were a stricken monster running away with the line.

A groan burst from Kaptan Andersen's throat. Had Holar gone mad? He opened his mouth to shout, when the second-mate at his side screeched and pointed astern.

There, from the shattered sea, burst the monstrous head; and, as the men gaped, the cachalot heaved his frightful bulk half out of the water and across the still bubbling track of the Gisli.

Down he went again, raising a tempest of spray and leaving a whirlpool of foam. And Holar laughed aloud, for he saw that the spray and foam were ruddy, and he knew he had beaten his enemy at the game of twelve years ago.

"Stop! Full astern!" he bawled. A minute later the cable was once more safely ahead of the bow.

"Stop!" The cable went rigid. "Half-speed ahead!"

At the same time the donkey-engine was set to reel in the cable at a moderate pace.

Fifty fathoms away the cachalot came to the surface in a fury, and blew fountains of blood skywards. The bomb had done its work after all. The Gisli crept nearer, and Holar was again at the gun.

The cachalot lashed out madly with his tail. Once he raised it as if to sound, but it fell with a futile thunderclap on the crimson water. He lay

still.

The Gisli crept nearer. Holar pointed the gun. He wanted to make

sure.

Suddenly a convulsion seized the enormous bulk. It rolled over, exposing the gaping jaws, the shallow