d knew the precise spot where he would reappear, threw himself up
in the air, turning a sort of summersault; and, "whack!" came his whip-
like tail round his victim's body, the whale seeming to writhe under the
blow as if driven half mad with pain.

"Look, look!" exclaimed Florry Meldrum, "the thresher isn't alone; what
are those long-nosed fishes swimming about under the whale? They seem
to be helping the other one!"

"You're right, Florry," said her father, "they are swordfish. What you
think are their noses are long projecting saw-like blades, and they are
the whale's deadliest enemy. I never saw them, however, attacking one
in company with a thresher before: they must have formed an alliance for
the express purpose, as they have really nothing in common."

"It reminds me, mister," said the American, putting a chew of tobacco in
his mouth pensively, "of a bull fit I once see in Carthagena when I was
to Spain some years ago. That air thresher is jist like the feller all
fixed up with lace and fallals called the Piccador, who used to stir up
the animile with squibs and crackers and make him fly round like a dawg
when he's kinder tickled with a flea under his tail; and the sword-fish,
as you calls them outlandish things, are sunthen' like the Matador that
gives the bull his quietus with his wepping. That air power of blood
that you see, I guess, is from them, and not from t'other's cow-hide of
a tail!"

"Golly, massa, you speaks for true," said Snowball, who formed one of
the party of lookers-on, abandoning his coppers in the galley in order
to see the fun. "Bress de Lord! see how dat long snout chap dere gib
him goss now!"

It really seemed an organised attack.

As soon as the back of the black-fish appeared above the surface, the
thresher, springing several yards out of the water, descended with great
violence on the object of its rancour and inflicted what sounded like a
hearty slap with its tail, the sword-fishes in their turn striking the
whale from below; so that, try how he might, the unhappy monster of the
deep could not escape his persevering foes.

"Sure and be jabers it bates Donnybrook Fair entirely!" said Mr
McCarthy, who had also come up from below, the news having also reached
him of what was taking place. "The poor baste will soon be bate into a
cocked hat with all them ragamuffins on to him at once! It's liking to
help him I'd be if I saw the chance!"

But the doom of the black-fish was