s to the rope
that held fast the baby whale to the ship and cut it with his
sheath-knife.

"What's that for?" said Colin.

"Let's get away from here," Hank replied, and signaled to go ahead.

As he did so, the mother whale caught sight of the remains of the body
of the little one sinking through the water and dashed for it. Colin
could have shouted with triumph in the hope that vengeance would be
served out upon the orcas, but he was not prepared for the next turn in
the tragedy. Like a pack of ravening wolves the killers hurled
themselves at the mother whale, three of them at one time fastening
themselves with a rending grip upon the soft lower lip, others striking
viciously with their rows of sharp teeth at her eyes. The issue was not
in doubt for a minute. No creature could endure such savage ferocity and
such united attack. The immense whale threshed from side to side, always
round the vessel, which seemed still to carry to her the scent of the
baby whale.

"Has she any chance?" the boy asked, full of pity for the victim of such
rapacity.

"Not the ghost of a chance," the whaler answered.

For a minute or two the whale seemed to have thrown off her demon foes
and turned away, but scarcely a moment was she left alone, for up in
front of her again charged five or six killers, rending and tearing at
her head, and the whale, blinded, gashed in a thousand places and
maddened by fear and pain, fled in the opposite direction.

Colin heard the captain give a wild cry from the poop and felt the
engines stop and reverse beneath him. He cast one glance over the rail
and like every man on board was struck motionless and silent. In the
phosphorescent gleams of the waves churned up by the incredible muscular
power of the killers, the old whale--sixty feet in length at least, and
weighing hundreds of tons--was rushing at a maddened spurt of fifteen
or even twenty miles an hour straight for the vessel's side, where a
blind instinct made her believe her calf still was to be found. There
was a death-like pause and then--a shock.

Almost every man aboard was thrown to the deck, and the vessel heeled
over to starboard until it seemed she must turn turtle. But she righted
herself, heavily and with a sick lurch that spoke of disaster. The
ship's carpenter ran to the pumps and sounded the well.

"Four inches, sir!" he called.

A moment later he dropped the rod again.

"Five and a half inches, sir," he cried, "an' comin' in f