the capture of one of these monstrous
cetaceans.

At the shout of "A whale! A whale!" Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans
came out of their cabin. Perhaps there was a whaler in sight! In that
case all they had to do to escape from their flying prison was to
jump into the sea, and chance being picked up by the vessel.

The crew were all on deck. "Shall we try, sir?" asked Tom Turner.

"Yes," said Robur.

In the engine-room the engineer and his assistant were at their posts
ready to obey the orders signaled to them. The "Albatross" dropped
towards the sea, and remained, about fifty feet above it.

There was no ship in sight--of that the two colleagues soon assured
themselves--nor was there any land to be seen to which they could
swim, providing Robur made no attempt to recapture them.

Several jets of water from the spout holes soon announced the
presence of the whales as they came to the surface to breathe. Tom
Turner and one of the men were in the bow. Within his reach was one
of those javelin-bombs, of Californian make, which are shot from an
arquebus and which are shaped as a metallic cylinder terminated by a
cylindrical shell armed with a shaft having a barbed point. Robur was
a little farther aft, and with his right hand signaled to the
engineers, while with his left, he directed the steersman. He thus
controlled the aeronef in every way, horizontally and vertically, and
it is almost impossible to conceive with what speed and precision the
"Albatross" answered to his orders. She seemed a living being, of
which he was the soul.

"A whale! A whale!" shouted Tom Turner, as the back of a cetacean
emerged from the surface about four cable-lengths in front of the
"Albatross."

The "Albatross" swept towards it, and when she was within sixty feet
of it she stopped dead.

Tom Turner seized the arquebus, which was resting against a cleat on
the rail. He fired, and the projectile, attached to a long line,
entered the whale's body. The shell, filled with an explosive
compound, burst, and shot out a small harpoon with two branches,
which fastened into the animal's flesh.

"Look out!" shouted Turner.

Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans, much against their will, became greatly
interested in the spectacle.

The whale, seriously wounded, gave the sea such a slap with his tail,
that the water dashed up over the bow of the aeronef. Then he plunged
to a great depth, while the line, which had been previously wetted in
a tub of water