literatoor," the sailor answered with an attempt at rough humor, "an' anyway, most o' them books you've been readin', lad, are written about whalin' off Greenland an' in the Atlantic."
"What difference does that make?" queried Colin. "Isn't a whale the same sort of animal all the world over?"
"There's all kinds of whales," the gunner said, as though pitying the boy for his lack of knowledge, "some big an' some little, some good an' some bad. Now, a 'right' whale, f'r instance, couldn't harm a baby, but the killers are just pure vicious."
"You mean the orcas?" the boy queried. "Only just the other day Captain Murchison was talking about them. He called them the wolves of the sea, and said they were the most daring hunters among all things that swim."
"Sea-tigers, some calls 'em," the other agreed, "an' they're fiercer than any wolves I've ever heard about, but I never saw any of 'em attackin' a boat. I have seen as many as twenty tearin' savagely at a whale that was lyin' alongside a ship an' was bein' cut up by the crew. The California gray whale—the devil-whale is what he really is—looks a lot worse to me than a killer.
He's as ugly-tempered as a spearfish, as vicious as a man-eatin' shark, as tricky as a moray, an' about as relentless as a closin' ice-floe."
"There she blo-o-ows!" came the cry again from the crow's-nest.
Hank, looking over the side, caught sight of the spout and, with a twist of the shoulder, walked aft to the first boat.
"I'm going, too," Colin reminded him.
The old whaler looked at him thoughtfully and disapprovingly.