e allied forces aft--what of them? Well, they had been rash--they
fully realized that fact, and would have fled, but one certainly found
that he had lingered on the scene too long. The thoroughly-roused
leviathan, with a reversal of his huge bulk that made the sea boil like
a pot, brandished his tail aloft and brought it down upon the doomed
"killer," making him at once the "killed." He was crushed like a shrimp
under one's heel.

The survivor fled--never faster--for an avalanche of living, furious
flesh was behind him, and coming with enormous leaps half out of the sea
every time. Thus they disappeared, but I have no doubts as to the issue.
Of one thing I am certain--that, if any of the trio survived, they never
afterwards attempted to rush a cachalot.

Strange to say, the sperm whale does not appear to be a fond mother. At
the advent of danger she often deserts her offspring and in such cases
it is hardly conceivable that she ever finds it again. It is true that
she is not gifted with such long "arms" as the BALAENAE wherewith to
cuddle her young one to her capacious bosom while making tracks from
her enemies; nor is she much "on the fight," not being so liberally
furnished with jaw as the fierce and much larger bull--for this is
the only species of whale in which there exists a great disproportion
between the sexes in point of size. Such difference as may obtain
between the MYSTICETA is slightly in favour of the female. I never heard
of a cow-cachalot yielding more than fifty barrels of oil; but I have
both heard of, and seen, bulls carrying one hundred and fifty. One
individual taken by us down south was seventy feet long, and furnished
us with more than the latter amount; but I shall come to him by-and-by.
Just one more point before leaving this (to me) fascinating subject for
the present.

To any one studying the peculiar configuration of a cachalot's mouth, it
would appear a difficult problem how the calf could suck. Certainly it
puzzled me more than a little. But, when on the "line" grounds we got
among a number of cows one calm day, I saw a little fellow about fifteen
feet long, apparently only a few days old, in the very act. The mother
lay on one side, with the breast nearly at the waters edge; while the
calf, lying parallel to its parent, with its head in the same direction,
held the teat sideways in the angle of its jaw, with its snout
protruding from the surface. Although we caught several cow-humpbacks