8 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
fathoms—he could not sound far below into 
ocean’s depths, and, carrying his foes with him, 
compel them to rise for air. Fifteen, perhaps 
twenty minutes exhausts the air supply of a 
killer ; a whale can remain below the surface 
for sixty. But he made a bold attempt. 
Raising his enormous head high in air, 
and giving it a mighty shake, he freed himself 
from one of the killers, whose body, twenty feet 
in length, he hurled from him as if it were a 
minnow ; but the other, with his cruel teeth 
buried bull-dog fashion in his thick lips, hung 
on with savage tenacity. And down upon his 
“ small ” the thresher, with his teeth gripping 
the loose, tough, and wrinkled skin, upreared 
his lengthy form, and brought his awful scythe¬ 
like tail down upon the victim’s back, with a 
smack that could be heard half a mile away. It 
cut, and then, as the whale rolled in his agony 
from the blow, a broad, white streak of blubber 
oozed through the severed skin. Before he 
could gather his strength for that seaward rush, 
which meant life, the thrown-off killer was 
back, and had seized him again by his starboard 
lip. Too late ! he could not sound and could 
not flee, and the poor, worried animal seemed 
