unner, "but I don't believe that any man what
writes about whalin' bein' easy, has ever tried it in a small boat."

"Well," said the boy, "isn't it true that the only time a whale-boat is
smashed up is when the monster threshes around in the death-flurry and
happens to hit the boat with his tail?"

"Not always."

"You mean a whale does sometimes go for a boat, in spite of what the
books say?"

"I never heard that whales cared much about literatoor," the sailor
answered with an attempt at rough humor, "an' anyway, most o' them books
you've been readin', lad, are written about whalin' off Greenland an' in
the Atlantic."

"What difference does that make?" queried Colin. "Isn't a whale the same
sort of animal all the world over?"

"There's all kinds of whales," the gunner said, as though pitying the
boy for his lack of knowledge, "some big an' some little, some good an'
some bad. Now, a 'right' whale, f'r instance, couldn't harm a baby, but
the killers are just pure vicious."

"You mean the orcas?" the boy queried. "Only just the other day Captain
Murchison was talking about them. He called them the wolves of the sea,
and said they were the most daring hunters among all things that swim."

"Sea-tigers, some calls 'em," the other agreed, "an' they're fiercer
than any wolves I've ever heard about, but I never saw any of 'em
attackin' a boat. I have seen as many as twenty tearin' savagely at a
whale that was lyin' alongside a ship an' was bein' cut up by the crew.
The California gray whale--the devil-whale is what he really is--looks a
lot worse to me than a killer. He's as ugly-tempered as a spearfish, as
vicious as a man-eatin' shark, as tricky as a moray, an' about as
relentless as a closin' ice-floe."

"There she blo-o-ows!" came the cry again from the crow's-nest.

Hank, looking over the side, caught sight of the spout and, with a twist
of the shoulder, walked aft to the first boat.

"I'm going, too," Colin reminded him.

The old whaler looked at him thoughtfully and disapprovingly.

"Orders is orders," he said at last, "an' if the skipper said you could
go, why, I reckon that ends it. An' if you're goin' anyway, you're safer
in the big boat than in the 'prams.' Tumble in."

Colin clambered into the double-ended boat with its high prow and stern
and settled himself down excitedly.

"I never really believed I'd get the chance to see any whale-spearing,"
he said. "Whaling with a cannon is only a make-belie