226 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



a shame!" but whenever he alluded to whales it was 

 with cuss words. I did not hear him swear once in 

 the two or three days I had him, and he never 

 cussed unless something came up about the whales. 

 They had smashed a boat for him and had given 

 him a close call for his life, and he was exceedingly 

 wroth at them. 



There was a fight, sure enough. Now it is curi- 

 ous that no one, so far as I know, has so much as 

 alluded to the battles between male whales, whether 

 in books of biology, travel, or general literature. 

 They are not fish. They are mammals, and as with 

 all other mammals, including man, the males fight 

 each other. "Let us get closer," I said. "They 

 will pay no attention to us now," and so we pulled 

 for the scene of conflict, keeping, however, at a 

 prudent distance. I believe the blows the comba- 

 tants gave could have been heard two miles away. 

 One would dive so as to give full swing to his tail — 

 ten or fifteen feet of it — in the air, and bring it 

 down on his opponent with a resounding smash. 

 The other would catch the diver rising, and lifting 

 his arm high in the air, deal him a tremendous 

 blow. Both kept spouting and emitting a sound 

 not so loud as that of a locomotive whistle, but in 

 the same key. They made the sea boil into foam. 

 They kept it up about twenty minutes. We gave 

 up the idea of crossing the sound to the waterfall, 

 but lifting the ragged sail, scudded down along the 

 coast till we found a cove, and there spread out on 



