oarsmen on the occasion. He, indeed, had been allowed by the
captain to use the harpoon when one of the officers was ill, and had
succeeded in striking his first fish in a way which gained him much
credit. On this occasion, however, we both remained on board.

Suddenly, not far from the ship, another whale rose to the surface, and,
in a most extraordinary manner, began to turn, and twist, to throw half
his huge bulk at a time out of the water, and furiously to lash it with
his tail till he was surrounded with a mass of foam. The boats were in
another direction, or we should have thought he had been wounded, and
had a lance or harpoon sticking in him, from which he was endeavouring
to free himself. He swam on, however, and approached the ship, still
continuing his extraordinary contortions. As he drew near, he lifted
his enormous head out of the water, when we saw hanging to his lower jaw
a large fish, twenty feet long or so, from which he was thus in vain
endeavouring to free himself! We had no little cause to be alarmed, as
he drew near, for the safety of the ship herself; for, in the blindness
of his agony, he might unintentionally strike her, or he might rush
against her side to get rid of his pertinacious enemy. More than once
the whale threw himself completely out of the water; but the fish still
hung on to his bleeding jaw. Together they fell again into the sea,
while all around them was stained of a crimson hue from the blood so
copiously flowing from the worried monster.

"That's a killer!" cried old Tom. "He'll not let go the whale till he
has him in his flurry, and then he and his mates will make a feast of
him. They have great strong teeth, bigger than a shark's, and are the
most voracious fish I ever saw. They bait a whale just as dogs do a
wild beast, or a bull, and seldom fail to kill him if they once get hold
of him."

This killer had a long dorsal fin, and a brown back and white belly. On
came the whale and the fish, twisting and turning as before. We all
stood ready to try and send them off--though very little use that would
have been, I own. Happily they floundered by just astern of the ship;
but so violent were their movements, and by such a mass of foam and
blood were they surrounded, that it was difficult to observe the
appearance of the killer. Equally impossible would it have been to have
approached the whale to harpoon him without an almost certainty of
losing the boat and the l