d what will they do with him?

Cut him up for bait, I suppose, for he is not very good to eat.

Certainly, he does smell very nasty.

Have you only just found out that? Sometimes when I have caught one, he
has made the boat smell so that I was glad to throw him overboard, and so
he saved his life by his nastiness. But they will catch plenty of
mackerel now; for where he is they are; and where they are, perhaps the
whale will be; for we are now well outside the harbour, and running
across the open bay; and lucky for you that there are no rollers coming
in from the Atlantic, and spouting up those cliffs in columns of white
foam.

* * * * *

"Hoch!"

Ah! Who was that coughed just behind the ship?

Who, indeed? look round and see.

There is nobody. There could not be in the sea.

Look--there, a quarter of a mile away.

Oh! What is that turning over in the water, like a great black wheel?
And a great tooth on it, and--oh! it is gone!

Never mind. It will soon show itself again.

But what was it?

The whale: one of them, at least; for the men say there are two different
ones about the bay. That black wheel was part of his back, as he turned
down; and the tooth on it was his back-fin.

But the noise, like a giant's cough?

Rather like the blast of a locomotive just starting. That was his
breath.

What? as loud as that?

Why not? He is a very big fellow, and has big lungs.

How big is he?

I cannot say: perhaps thirty or forty feet long. We shall be able to see
better soon. He will come up again, and very likely nearer us, where
those birds are.

I don't want him to come any nearer.

You really need not be afraid. He is quite harmless.

But he might run against the yacht.

He might: and so might a hundred things happen which never do. But I
never heard of one of these whales running against a vessel; so I suppose
he has sense enough to know that the yacht is no concern of his, and to
keep out of its way.

But why does he make that tremendous noise only once, and then go under
water again?

You must remember that he is not a fish. A fish takes the water in
through his mouth continually, and it runs over his gills, and out behind
through his gill-covers. So the gills suck-up the air out of the water,
and send it into the fish's blood, just as they do in the newt-larva.

Yes, I know.

But the whale breathes with lungs like you and me; and when he goes under
water he has to hold