420 Notes on Sport and Travel v 



I am certain. I have seen it clearly exercised in 

 the case of harpooned bull whales, who, in their 

 trouble, were accompanied side by side by other 

 bulls, evidently encouraging and advising their perse- 

 cuted brother to keep his head cool and do his best 

 to get himself free, which by the way he generally 

 did, male Megaptera not being quite as easily speared 

 as flounders. 



It was said of old time (even, I believe, by me), 

 that the porpoises followed a wounded brother, either 

 to eat him or to see what he had left them in his 

 will. From what I have seen since of their big 

 cousins the whales, I believe that they congregate 

 about him from higher and kindlier motives. 



To return to our thresher. Do not for a moment 

 suppose that I assert that there is no other species 

 of the so-called thresher than the silver-armed mother 

 whale I have just been twaddling about. I have 

 myself seen another, and the most popular one, the 

 ' killer,' or, as the sailors always call him, the 'keeler,' 

 thresher, or whale. Not only have I seen what I 

 was told was him, but I have drawn a picture of him, 

 or at least the nearest approach to a picture I am 

 capable of, and that is before me now on the page 

 of a wreck-sodden log-book (Letts's Diary, in fact, 

 but log-book sounds better). It was taken from life 

 off the south-east coast of New Caledonia (a plague 

 on the clumsy loons that let that fine island slip 

 through our fingers !) shortly after leaving that 

 glorious half-freezing half-barrier reef (what a sight 



