V 

 'AMONG THE SHARKS AND WHALES' 



' Please, sir, turn out ; there's another whale and 

 thresher hard at it on the starboard bow.' 



I have asked to be ' turned out ' (expressive 

 term) whenever the watch considers that there is 

 anything going on in sea or sky a Httle beyond the 

 common, and so, though knowing pretty well by 

 previous experience what I am likely to see, I turn 

 out ; for albeit the wonders of my nautical friends 

 are not always quite as great as they fancy, I might 

 now and again miss something really worth seeing 

 were I to turn up my nose at them. 



Well, from the cool, dewy morning deck what do 

 I see ? Something which, as I expected, I have 

 often seen before, but which is always worth seeing 

 again. A sapphire blue sea, white flecked by the 

 crisp trade winds, and out of it, some three or four 

 hundred yards off, glittering in the level sunbeams, a 

 mighty, bright, silvery white sabre, twenty or thirty 

 feet long and three or four across, arising with a 

 grand slow steady sweep and then descending with 



