f he misses a hundred thousand or so out of the
side of his huge jaws, at the top of his narrow gullet, he need not
worry. The whale never starves until he is stranded. Out of water he
may continue to breathe for an hour or two--but he cannot eat.

"On a fine morning on the Labrador Coast," Dr. Grenfell tells us, "I
have counted a dozen whales in a single school. Now and again a huge
tail would emerge from the water and lash the surface with its full
breadth, making a sound like the firing of a cannon, while the silence
was otherwise broken only by the noise of their blowing, as they
rolled lazily along on the surface."

The thresher whale is only about twenty feet long, but he is a fierce
fellow--the pirate of the whale family, terrorizing the rest, and
ready to tackle anything in sight.

He has a fin which shows where he is as he cruises along close to the
surface. He readily eats other whales. Three threshers went after a
big cow sperm whale and her enormous infant, in shallow water. First
they killed the "calf." Then they chased the mother away, and came
back and ate the young one.

In 1892 a huge sperm whale rammed the rocks near Battle Harbor, where
Dr. Grenfell now has one of his hospitals.

The whale evidently wondered why the rocks didn't give way--for nearly
everything else he encountered had collapsed when he butted into it.
He lunged once too often, and was left high, if not dry, on the beach.

They towed him into the harbor, a prize eighty feet in length, and
proceeded to pump the oil out of him. From the head one hundred and
forty gallons were taken. This oil in the whale's head, which may be a
third as big as his body, helps to float the great jawbones.

Of course the "blowing" of the whale is one of its most remarkable
performances. A whale can stay below an hour, because he puts air into
his blood by spouting about sixty times, the operation taking him
about ten minutes.

Grenfell helped take to pieces a "sulphur-bottom" whale ninety-five
feet long, supposed to weigh nearly 300,000 pounds. A boat could row
into the mouth. The jawbone was nearly eighteen feet long. "It took
four of us a whole afternoon, with axes and swords mounted on pike
handles, to cut out one bone and carry it to our steamer." And in
order to get back far enough to start cutting at the end, where the
joint came, they "had to walk almost in the footsteps of Jonah."

The whale is the one animal that lives to a great age--and