Yes. He does look very like a boat upside down. But that is only his head and shoulders. He will blow next.
“Hoch!”
Oh! What a jet of spray, like the Geysers! And the sun made a rainbow on the top of it. He is quite still now.
Yes; he is taking a long breath or two. You need not hold my hand so tight. His head is from us; and when he goes down he will go right away.
Oh, he is turning head over heels! There is his back fin again. And—Ah! was that not a slap! How the water boiled and foamed; and what a tail he had! And how the mackerel flew out of the water!
Yes. You are a lucky boy to have seen that. I have not seen one of those gentlemen show his “flukes,” as they call them, since I was a boy on the Cornish coast.
Where is he gone?
Hunting mackerel, away out at sea. But did you notice something odd about his tail, as you call it—though it is really none?
It looked as if it was set on flat, and not upright, like a fish’s. But why is it not a tail?
Just because it is set on flat, not upright: and learned men will tell you that those two flukes are the “rudiments”—that is, either the beginning, or more likely the last remains—of two hind feet. But that belongs to the second volume of Madam How’s Book of Kind; and you have not yet learned any of the first volume, you know, except about a few butterflies. Look here! Here are more whales coming. Don’t be frightened. They are only little ones, mackerel-hunting, like the big one.