ONE:Three hours later the stars still gleamed down through the balmy night above the long westward-galloping column of our brigade, that for those three hours had not slackened from the one unmitigated speed. The Federal regiment of whose plans Charlotte had apprised Ferry had been camped well to southward of this course, but in the day just past they had marched to the north, intending a raid around our right and into our rear. To-night they were resting in a wide natural meadow through the middle of which ran this road we were on. Around the southern edge of this inviting camp-ground by a considerable stream of water; the northern side was on rising ground and skirted by woods, and in these woods as day began to break stood our brigade, its presence utterly unsuspected in all that beautiful meadow whitened over with lane upon lane of the tents of the regiment of Federal cavalry, whose pickets we had already silently surprised and captured. Now, as warily as quails, we moved along an unused, woodcutters' road and began to trot up a gentle slope beyond whose crest the forest sank to the meadow. We were within a few yards of this crest, when a small mounted patrol came up from the other side, stood an instant profiled against the sky, bent low, gazed, wheeled and vanished.
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THREE:How was she rude? he repeated."There are the boatmen, but no boats," said Fred, as he pointed to some stalwart men who were sitting on the bank, and evidently waiting for something to turn up.
THREE:Well, Mr Keeling, she said, you cant expect{147} me to say anything more about it, if all you want to do is to swear at me. Perhaps you would like to swear at me again. Pray do.Frank asked why it was the whale "spouted," or blew up, the column of spray. Captain Spofford explained that the whale is not, properly speaking, a fish, but an animal. "He has warm blood, like a cow or horse," said the Captain, "and he must come to the surface to breathe. He takes a certain amount of water into his lungs along with the air, and when he throws it out, it makes the spray you have seen, and which the sailors call a spout."
THREE:He paused a moment."But you don't get all the whales you see, by a long shot. Many a whale gets away before you can fasten to him, and many another whale, after you have laid on and fastened, will escape you. He sinks, and tears the iron loose; he runs away to windward ten or twenty miles an hour, and you must cut the line to save your lives; he smashes the boat, and perhaps kills some of his assailants; he dies below the surface, and when he dies there he stays below, and you lose him; and sometimes he shows[Pg 66] such an amount of toughness that he seems to bear a charmed life. We fight him with harpoon and lance, and in these later days they have an invention called the bomb-lance or whaling-gun. A bomb-shell is thrown into him with a gun like a large musket, and it explodes down among his vitals. There's another gun that is fastened to the shaft of a harpoon, and goes off when the whale tightens the line; and there's another that throws a lance half-way through him. Well, there are whales that can stand all these things and live.
