As the distance, and the want of
boats, prevented any further communication, the soldiers, after gazing
at the receding vessels for a time, disappeared from the cliffs, and
were soon lost from the sight of the adventurous mariners. Hour after
hour was consumed in the tedious navigation, against an adverse tide,
and the short day was drawing to a close, before they approached the
mouth of their destined haven. While making one of their numerous
stretches to and from the land, the cutter, in which Barnstable
continued, passed the victim of their morning's sport, riding on the
water, the waves curling over his huge carcass as on some rounded rock,
and already surrounded by the sharks, who were preying on his
defenceless body.
"See! Master Coffin," cried the lieutenant, pointing out the object to
his cockswain as they glided by it, "the shovel-nosed gentlemen are
regaling daintily: you have neglected the Christian's duty of burying
your dead."
The old seaman cast a melancholy look at the dead whale and replied:
"If I had the creatur in Boston Bay, or on the Sandy Point of Munny-Moy,
'twould be the making of me! But riches and honor are for the great and
the larned, and there's nothing left for poor Tom Coffin to do but to
veer and haul on his own rolling-tackle, that he may ride out on the
rest of the gale of life without springing any of his old spars."
"How now, long Tom!" cried his officer, "these rocks and cliffs will
shipwreck you on the shoals of poetry yet; you grow sentimental!"
"Them rocks might wrack any vessel that struck them," said the literal
cockswain; "and as for poetry, I wants none better than the good old
song of Captain Kidd; but it's enough to raise solemn thoughts in a Cape
Poge Indian, to see an eighty-barrel whale devoured by shirks--'tis an
awful waste of property! I've seen the death of two hundred of the
creaturs, though it seems to keep the rations of poor old Tom as short
as ever.
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