Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/88

"And every man was motionless, and every speaker's lip
Just stopped as it was, with the word half-said: there wasn't a sound in the ship
Till the Captain hailed the masthead, 'Whereaway is the whale you see?'
And the cry came down again, 'He blows! about four points on our lee.
And three miles off, sir,—there he blows! he's going to leeward fast!'
And then we sprang to the rigging, and saw the great whale at last!
 
"Ah! shipmates, that was a sight to see: the water was smooth as a lake.
And there was the monster rolling, with a school of whales in his wake.
They looked like pilot-fish round a shark, as if they were keeping guard;
And, shipmates, the spout of that Amber Whale was high as a sky-sail yard.
There was never a ship's crew worked so quick as our whalemen worked that day,—