each eye looked like a fearful organ of vision, their white and yellowish undersides and black backs flashed and gleamed and the big fins cut the water like swords. The huge curved teeth gleamed in the reddened water as the 'tigers of the sea' lashed round, infuriated with lust for blood.
Then with a violent gesture of reminder, as though he had forgotten that which was of prime importance, Hank took a few quick steps 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