His CAPTORS. 106 



Missing the Mark. Astride of the Flukes. 



she scooped up), and the full weight of the blow, 

 intended for the boat, fell upon the back of the 

 other whale. He sunk immediately, going 

 down bent nearly double, and, the captain 

 thinks, must have been killed by the blow. 

 The same person has seen a stout hickory pole, 

 three inches in diameter and six feet long, bro- 

 ken into four pieces by a blow from a whale's 

 tail, and the pieces sent flying twenty feet in 

 the air, and that, too, when no other resistance 

 was offered than that of the water upon which 

 it floated. 



The first whale this man struck there turn- 

 ed him over in two different boats, and after- 

 ward " knocked them into kindling wood," 

 while spouting blood in thick clots, and yet 

 this whale lived four hours after, showing its 

 great tenacity of life. He came up alongside 

 the boat, and turned it over with his nose, as a 

 hog would his eating-trough, and then with his 

 flukes deliberately broke it up. Of course the 

 crew had to take to Nature's oars, and they all 

 marvelously escaped Unhurt, although one of 

 them was carried sitting upon the whale's flukes 

 several rods, till he slid off unharmed from his 

 strange sea-chariot. This man could say, in 



