thorough restoration of the blonde’s strength; and they invited the Duke
to be of the party. They judged that the Duke’s constant presence and
the lawyer’s protracted absence would do the rest–for they did not
invite the lawyer.
So they set sail in a steamer for America–and the third day out, when
their sea-sickness called truce and permitted them to take their first
meal at the public table, behold there sat the lawyer! The Duke and
party made the best of an awkward situation; the voyage progressed, and
the vessel neared America.
But, by and by, two hundred miles off New Bedford, the ship took fire;
she burned to the water’s edge; of all her crew and passengers, only
thirty were saved. They floated about the sea half an afternoon and all
night long. Among them were our friends. The lawyer, by superhuman
exertions, had saved the blonde and her parents, swimming back and forth
two hundred yards and bringing one each time–(the girl first). The Duke
had saved himself. In the morning two whale ships arrived on the scene
and sent their boats. The weather was stormy and the embarkation was
attended with much confusion and excitement. The lawyer did his duty
like a man; helped his exhausted and insensible blonde, her parents and
some others into a boat (the Duke helped himself in); then a child fell
overboard at the other end of the raft and the lawyer rushed thither and
helped half a dozen people fish it out, under the stimulus of its
mother’s screams. Then he ran back–a few seconds too late–the blonde’s
boat was under way. So he had to take the other boat, and go to the
other ship. The storm increased and drove the vessels out of sight of
each other–drove them whither it would.
When it calmed, at the end of three days, the blonde’s ship was seven
hundred miles north of Boston and the other about seven hundred south of
that port. The blonde’s captain was bound on a whaling cruise in the
North Atlantic and could not go back such a distance or make a port
without orders; such being nautical law. The lawyer’s captain was to
cruise in the North Pacific, and he could not go back or make a port
without orders. All the lawyer’s money and baggage were in the blonde’s
boat and went to the blonde’s ship–so his captain made him work his
passage as a common sailor. When both ships had been cruising nearly a
year, the one was off the coast of Greenland and the other in Behring’s
Strait. The blonde had long ago been well-nigh persuaded that her lawyer
had been washed overboard and lost just before the whale ships reached
the raft, and now, under the pleadings of her parents and the Duke she
was at last beginning to nerve herself for the doom of the covenant, and
prepare for the hated marriage.
But she would not yield a day before the date set. The weeks dragged on,
the time narrowed, orders were given to deck the ship for the wedding–a
wedding at sea among icebergs and walruses. Five days more and all would
be over. So the blonde reflected, with a sigh and a tear. Oh where was
her true love–and why, why did he not come and save her? At that moment
he was lifting his harpoon to strike a whale in Behring’s Strait, five
thousand miles away, by the way of the Arctic Ocean, or twenty thousand
by the way of the Horn–that was the reason. He struck, but not with
perfect aim–his foot slipped and he fell in the whale’s mouth and went
down his throat. He was insensible five days. Then he came to himself
and heard voices; daylight was streaming through a hole cut in the
whale’s roof. He climbed out and astonished the sailors who were
hoisting blubber up a ship’s side. He recognized the vessel, flew
aboard, surprised the wedding party at the altar and exclaimed:
“Stop the proceedings–I’m here! Come to my arms, my own!”
There were foot-notes to this extravagant piece of literature wherein the
author endeavored to show that the whole thing was within the