CHAPTER V 

 THE PLAYFUL HUMPBACK 



THE first whale which I ever saw "breach," cr 

 jump out of the water, was a humpback in 

 Alaska. We raised the whale's spout half a 

 mile away and ran up close before the animal sounded. 

 It seemed certain that he would blow again, and with 

 engines stopped the ship rolled slowly from side to 

 side in the swell. The silence was intense and our 

 nerves were strained to the breaking point. 



Ten minutes dragged by; then, without a sound 

 of warning, the floor of the ocean seemed to rise 

 and a mountainous black body, dripping with foam, 

 heaved upward almost over our heads. It paused an 

 instant, then fell sideways to be swallowed up in a 

 vortex of green water. With the camera ready in 

 my hands I stared at the thing. It might have been 

 an eruption of a submarine volcano or a waterspout; 

 I would as soon have thought of photographing 

 either. Even the nerves of Sorenson, the harpooner, 

 were shaken and he clung weakly to the gun without 

 a move to use it. 



The whale had dropped back scarcely twenty feet 

 away; if it had fallen in the other direction the ves- 

 sel would have been crushed like an eggshell beneath 

 its forty tons of weight. Never since then have I 



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