Orca Gladiator. 11 
rapidly exhausted, and although he still struck 
the water resounding blows with his tail, he 
was convulsed with pain and terror, and swam 
slowly round and round in a circle, spouting 
feebly, and rolling from side to side in a vain 
effort to shake off the killers, and find his way 
to the open sea. Then, as if wearied with their 
attempts to get at his tongue, the two destroyers 
suddenly let go their hold and swam away some 
twenty yards or so ; and the thresher, too, 
although he still lay alongside, ceased his 
fearful blows and let his long, narrow, and 
tapering body lie motionless upon the water, 
and the five grey sharks drew nearer and 
nearer. But the killers had not left him, for 
after spouting once or twice, they slewed round 
and came at the prey with a savage rush, and, 
leaping bodily out of the water, flung them¬ 
selves upon his back time and time again with 
the most cruel and extraordinary pertinacity. 
And so, at last, there he lay, his monstrous 
head and thirty feet of his back raised high 
out of the water, and the white seethe of 
foam in which his colossal frame writhed and 
shuddered in deadly torment was tinged 
deeply with a bloodied red. Better far would 
