The Easeful Whale 41 



and whalers generally seem to be agreed that there is 

 not much to choose between these monsters in point 

 of size. That is as regards one sex, but the females 

 of the Mysticetae are, as a rule, larger than the males, 

 while, as I have before said, the sperm whale cow never 

 exceeds half the size of the bull. 



Their lives, by a curious contrast with the sperm- 

 whale, are spent in slow-going, easy fashion. In spite 

 of their terrific surroundings of crashing ice-bergs, 

 ice-fields heaving under the tremendous pressure of 

 the storm wave, and bitter blighting winds laden with 

 death to any alien intruder into that stern domain, 

 the Right Whales are placid, quiet, peaceful ; with 

 an appearance of great content with their surroundings. 

 The Almighty has ordained that these vast denizens 

 of the frozen Northern Seas shall be at no pains to 

 secure an abundant supply of food, and by one of those 

 paradoxes that Nature seems to delight in, that food 

 for the supply of the largest of created things is made 

 up of the accumulated myriads of ocean's smallest 

 denizens, that is, of those actually visible. From the 

 crow's-nest of a whale-ship on a clear day the watcher 

 may see the ocean lined out in parti-coloured bands 

 of red and blue, strangely regular and extending to 

 the horizon's verge. A draw-bucket plunged into 

 one of the red bands a hundred feet in breadth will 

 bring up a motley collection of minute shell-fish, a 

 crawling, clinging mass of life that has its basis of 

 subsistence in the unseen fauna of the fecund sea. 



These tiny Crustacea in their myriads await the 

 advent of the Right Whale, who ranging lengthwise 

 along the red bands, inhales his food without an effort 

 until the enormous cavity of his mouth is filled with 

 untold thousands of tiny shell-fish quite unconscious 

 of their transition. Then the wonderful apparatus 



