hale was some fifty feet long--nearly a
third of the length of the _Nancy Bell_--the thresher could not have
exceeded thirteen feet; and as for girth, the former was in proportion
like a portly, Daniel-Lambert sort of man put by the side of a starving
street urchin of seven. The only advantage the thresher apparently
possessed was in its eyes, which, when one could get a glimpse of them,
looked like those of a hawk; while the unwieldy cetacean had little tiny
optics, not much bigger than those of a common haddock, which were
placed in an unwieldy lump of a head, that seemed ever so much bigger
than its body, with a tremendous lower jaw containing a row of teeth,
each one of which was nearly a foot long.

The thresher, seemingly, had only the advantage of his antagonist in the
proportionate size of his eyes; but, "just wait till you have seen him
use his long feather-like tail!" as Maurice Negus said, and you will
arrive at the conclusion that the combatants were not so very unequally
matched after all.

The very size of the black-fish militated against his chances for, while
it took him more than his own length to turn in the water, the thresher
darted, here, there and everywhere, like an eel--just getting out of his
reach when the other thought he had got him and had opened his ponderous
jaws to crush him. It was at this moment that his agile tormentor,
seizing his opportunity, would leap out of the water and give the whale
a "whack" on his side behind the fin, one of his tenderest spots, the
blow resounding far and wide over the water and probably leaving a weal
if not an indentation in the animal's side.

Mr Zachariah Lathrope got quite interested, bobbing from one side of
the topgallant-forecastle to the other, and trying to obtain the best
view he could of the contest.

"Bully for the little scorpion, marm!" he exclaimed to "the Major," as
he shoved his hands down into his trouser pockets and seemed to lift
himself up in his eagerness. "I'll bet my bottom dollar he'll fix that
air whale to rights! By gosh, that wer a sockdolager; I guess the big
varmint is kinder gettin' riled!"

The whale here spouted and fluked his tail, diving down for a moment
beneath the surface; but, he did not long disappear, and when he came up
shortly afterwards nearer the ship, the spectators could see that the
water around him was dyed with blood.

As the black-fish rose, the thresher, who evidently had been waiting for
him an