en
whales killed during the season, whether humpbacks, "right" whales, or
finbacks, three-fourths are captured through the pack of killers seizing
and literally holding them till the boats come up and end the mighty
creatures' miseries.

Towards the end of winter an enormous number of whales appear on the
Australian coast, coming from the cold Antarctic seas, and travelling
northward along the land towards the breeding grounds--the Bampton
and Bellona Shoals and the Chesterfield Groups, situated between New
Caledonia and the Australian mainland, between 17 deg. and 20 deg. S. The
majority of these whales strike the land about Cape Howe and Gabo Island
at the boundary line between New South Wales and Victoria--sixty miles
south of Twofold Bay. Most of them are finbacks, though these are always
accompanied by numbers of humpbacks and a few "right" whales--the most
valuable of all the southern cetacea except the spermaceti or cachalot.
The latter, however, though they will travel in company with the flying
finback and the timid humpback and "right" whale, has no fear of the
killers. He is too enormously strong, and could crush even a full-grown
killer to a pulp between his mighty jaws were he molested, and
consequently the killers give the cachalot a wide berth as a dangerous
customer. The finback, however, swift and lengthy as he is, seldom
manages to escape once he is "bailed up," and having no weapon of
defence except his flukes (for he is one of the baleen or toothless
whales), he has but one chance of his life, and that is to dive to such
a depth that his assailants have to let go their hold of him in order to
ascend to the surface to breathe.

The finback, I must mention, although the most plentiful of all the
whale family, and sometimes attaining the length of ninety feet, is
never attacked by whale-boats when he is "loose," _i.e._, free, and
is only captured when his struggles with the ferocious killers have so
exhausted him that a boat can approach and dart a harpoon into or lance
him. The reason for this immunity of primary attack by boats is that the
finback is in the first place of little value when compared to either
the humpback or "right" whale, for the coating of blubber is thin, and
the plates of baleen (or whalebone) he possesses are very short; and in
the second place he is, although so timid a creature, too dangerous to
be struck with a harpoon, for he would take the entire whale-line out of
three or