The Belted Seas

tation in shares in the Anaconda, and shipped myself as second mat

of breath with his enthusiasm; and he was a German, too, and a Professor of Allerleiwissenschaft, which I take to mean Things in General. He was around ga

and a Kanaka named Kamelillo. There was a fourth that got stranded there too. We called her "Liebchen" and she surely acted singular, did Liebchen, but I liked her too. Kreps said she was "symbol," but his ideas an

been shipwrecked now and then, and was sometimes drunk and sometimes starved, and had no opinion on these things, except that he'd rather be drunk than starved. I never knew one that took

ve, for it's short but ugly. When it was done with us the Anaconda began to leak fearful in the waist, and I dare say the typhoon was excuse enou

specimens, for the captain wouldn't take them in his boat, nor the first mate in his,

sciences ignorant

's the Paci

intelligent! Not as d

ca came flapping over the rail with a squawk, and lit on Kamelillo, and fell into the bottom of the boat. We got away after the other boats, the night coming on clear, and K

rection by the chart, without names enough to go around them; and on the second morning we saw a high shore

down under his spectacles. "Gott sei dan

Kamelillo says. "No! Maybe

enty feet deep in the channel, being high tide, and running in slow. Wine-palms and cocoanut trees grew on the bluffs on each side. Some leaned over, with roots out where the earth had caved away. We came about the curve and saw a closed bay, shut in by the bluffs from the outer sea and even the winds. It w

I never was in the whaling business, and Liebchen was the only one I ever got real acquainted with. I've heard it's common for them to be stranded on shallow shores, and get off again if let alone. The harbour may have been Liebchen's boudoir for aught I know

penned in, he acted outrageous, and

ill de habits of de ceta

d sidled off and was rolling about in the middle of the harbour when we came to the bluffs, where the wine-palms and cocoanut t

messy-looking channel, a sort of log jam, with roots and palm-tree tops mixed

roots, called "poi," which wasn't bad, if you rolled a fish in it, and baked it on the coals, and thought about something else. But at that time Liebchen came round the north shore in a

hale. You keep her out

lukes, and sidle off like she was bashful, and then she'd come swooping around enough to make the harbour sizzle, and stick her nose in the bottom and her tail in the air, trembling with her emotions, and then she'd come up and smile at you a rod each way. I judged she meant all right, but she didn't understand her limitat

. She is boetry. She is de sharm of everlast

"Everlasting feminine!

d of a log moonlight nights, with his fat face and spectacles shining, and Liebchen would muzzle around with a ten-foot snout like an engine boile

m her point of view sea bathing wasn't becoming, and when Liebchen stood on her head in the water, Veronica used to take to the woods with her feelings pretty rumpled. Kamelillo disliked Veronica on account of her fussiness, and because she had l

un. I show him." He went to Kreps. "I tell you, dam Dutchman," he says, meaning to be so

"Mitout perception, mitou

le. All right, dam Dutchman, me

e yearning, de ideal. Listen! Liebchen, she iss de abstraction, de pr

Go see thas girl whale on a bamboo raft. No

h that notion. "So,

elillo, getting interested. "You teach her to she wear pett

. That whale'll drown yo

hen more near," he says. "It iss time to a

e. That's a way of acting which calls for respect, but it's not romantic. She slapped the bamboo raft, and there was no such thing. She swallowed the harbour and spit it out. She whooped and danced and teetered. She let out all her primeval feelings. She put on no airs, and she made no pretences. She turned everything she could find into scrambled eggs, and played the "Marseillaise" on her blow-hole. She did herself up into knots to break whalebone, and untied them like a pop of a cork. She was

" he says. "She

ays Kamelillo.

er," says Kreps very dignif

ays Kamelillo.

t or early morning with the ebb. We went to the bank when the tid

s, "she iss to

e six feet or more. Veronica cackled at her, and her feathers stood up, so that you could see she thought Liebchen w

osted. If she had had time to think she might have flopped ashore, but she was flustered, and Liebchen got out of the channel and steered into the Pacific. Veronica squawked a few times, and no more. The sea was quiet. The two moved off,

to flutter the signal on the bluffs, which was Kreps' red shirt, and hung there to

the bluffs. There was Liebchen! She appeared to have grounded in the channel, trying to get in quick at low tide. But there were two harpoons, more than the bamboo, sticking

got sense, thas whale!" And

to stay there and needed all the room. After a while she grew quiet. A few motions of her flukes, and th

s acquainte

that's yo

bchen!" s

harpoons, and shook his head, for he

ys. "Thas y

Billy here was letting her have it, the hen gives a squawk and comes flopping aboard; and Billy lets her have it, and Dick here lets her have it, and she goes plumb down sudden. Then up she comes and starts, like she

her, and Kreps took off his

iebchen dead, that was full of sensibility, and Veronica come back with

nd we went back to gather u

d, though a Dutch one;" the

to San Francisco in course of time, but no richer th

San Francisco. Kamelillo used to cook unlikely things which Kreps and Veronica ate peaceable between them. Kreps was well-to-do, and he seemed cut out for a happy life. Any kind of cooking suited him. The whole world grew knowledge for him to collec