Dick Sand

The sailors knew that they were lost. All rose, giving a terrible cry, which was perhaps heard on the Pilgrim. A terrible blow from the monster's tail had just struck the whale-boat underneath. The boat, thrown into the air with irresistible violence, fell back, broken in three pieces, in the midst of waves furiously lashed by the whale's bounds. Young Dick Sand has just been a sailor on the Pilgrim, a whaler on a Pacific Ocean hunt between South America and New Zealand. But the captain and the rest of the crew have been killed trying to harpoon a whale.