V ' Among the Sharks and Whales' 423 



usual steady alternate ' dive and blow ' manner, 

 the whole of the body being rarely under the surface 

 of the water at once, and apparently utterly indif- 

 ferent to the attentions of a creature, some thirty or 

 forty feet long, who ever and anon slid two-thirds 

 of its length out of the water, and, expanding an 

 enormous pair of flippers, came down with a crash 

 that resounded like a heavy cannon-shot at the 

 distance of half a mile or more, and with a foaming 

 and a splashing and a reducing of the whole adjacent 

 sea into its ultimate particles, which was indeed a 

 sight to be seen. This happened over and over again, 

 this so-called ' threshing ' of the whales, who for their 

 part continued on their tranquil way as undisturbed 

 as a locomotive among the howlings of a mob. 



Closely as I watched, I could see no very clear 

 reason for being so very certain that the thresher 

 ever hit the whale at all, and, moreover, could not 

 help asking myself that, supposing he did, whether 

 it was quite sure which of them would get the 

 worst of it. The thresher would have given himself 

 a most confounded thwack on his waistcoat had he 

 impinged fairly on the hard and humpy back of the 

 mighty macrocepJialus ; whether the whale would 

 have cared — what shall we say, a single blow ? — is 

 quite another question. 



What the affair really was, whether a jealous 

 grampus trying to scare his big cousins from his own 

 private happy hunting - grounds, or whether the 

 thresher was really only a young spermaceti whale 



