linging to the oars and pieces
of wreckage; and the killers have swum up to, looked at, and _smelt_
them--but never have they touched a man with intent to do him harm. And
wherever the killers are, the sharks are not, for Jack Shark dreads a
killer as the devil is said to dread holy water. Sometimes I have
seen 'Jack' make a rush in between the killers, and rip off a piece of
hanging blubber, but he will carefully watch his chance to do so.

On some occasions, when a pack of killers set out whale-hunting, they
will be joined by a thresher--the fox-shark (Alopias vulpes)--and then
while the killers bite and tear the unfortunate cetacean, the thresher
deals him fearful blows with his scythe-like tail. The master of a
whaling vessel told me that off the north end of New Caledonia, there
was, from 1868 till 1876, a pack of nine killers which were always
attended by two threshers and a sword-fish. Not only he, but many other
whaling skippers had seen this particular swordfish, year after year,
joining the killers in attacks upon whales. The cruising ground of this
pack extended for thirty miles, north and south, and the nine creatures
and their associates were well known to hundreds of New Bedford
whalemen. No doubt many of these combats, witnessed from merchant ships,
have led to many sea-serpent stories; for when a thresher stands his
twenty feet of slender body straight up on end like a pole, he presents
a strange sight, as his long body sways, and curves, and twists in air,
as he deals his cutting blows upon his victim. Then, too, the enormous
length of the pectoral fins of a humpback whale, which show dazzlingly
white as he rolls from side to side in his agony, and frantically beats
the water with them in his struggles, or upends one after the other like
a mast, might well be mistaken for the uprearing of a serpent's
body. But any South Sea whaleman will smile when he hears talk of the
sea-serpent, though he has not forgotten the awe and fascination with
which he was filled, when he first saw a whale in the agonies of
combat with _Alopias vulpes_ and _Orca gladiator_, and the serpentine
evolutions of the former creature.

The whaleman in the Pacific sees very strange and wondrous sights; and
never, since Herman Melville wrote his strangely exciting and weird
book, 'The Whale,' nearly fifty years ago, has any writer given us such
a vivid and true picture of whaling life and incident as Mr Frank T.
Bullen in his 'Cruise