he huge mammal looked like a cigar-shaped piece
of smooth, shiny slate-colored India-rubber--no longer black. Four or
five feet of its diameter and forty feet or more of its length showed
like a mound in the smooth water, and the body alternately rose and
dipped as the whale swam slowly along. It was doubtless feeding on the
tiny marine creatures which are the sole food of the right whale. It
took great "gulps" of sea water into its cavernous mouth, water which it
strained out through its curtain of baleen, swallowing only the tiny
fish down a gullet so small that it would not admit a man's fist.

The Scarboro was approaching it from behind and at an angle, so that its
course and ours made the sides of a V. Captain Rogers followed the
course of the whale alertly, swinging the muzzle of the cannon with
skill. Most of the crew were grouped behind him in anxious expectancy.

Suddenly I felt a touch upon my arm. It was Tom Anderly. He was
pointing silently over the port bow. There, a couple of miles away, I
judged, several columns of mist were spouting into the air. _There was
the school!_

But I turned to view the nearby mammoth again just as the gun spoke. I
saw a hideous, crimson zigzag gash on the broad side of the whale, I
heard the rumbling roar of the time-bomb at the point of the harpoon
exploding in the whale's vitals.

Instantly the whole crew were in a pandemonium of excitement; but the
captain's shrill orders were obeyed like clockwork. I felt the blow of
the great bark give a convulsive jerk. The whale had gone straight
downward and the cable attached to the harpoon shot over the bow so fast
that the eye could not follow its course. Where the hemp touched the
rail a column of smoke arose. Two men sprang with buckets to dip up the
sea-water and pour it upon the shrieking line. The windlass spun around
like a boy's top.

Coil after coil of the rope leaped into nothingness. Had there been a
big express locomotive hitched to that line, and going at full speed, I
do not think the line would have paid out any faster!

At last the windlass ceased to spin. The whale had either touched
bottom, or had descended as far as it could. We had already laid our
mainsail aback and as the line lay slack upon the water, Captain Rogers
motioned to the men at the windlass to wind in. It was like playing a
fish at the end of a line and reel.

Those next few moments were breathless ones for all hands. Suddenly the
sea parted r