“‘But who is to guide me?’
“‘Oh, something will—a great Something, that even whales don’t understand.’
“So away went the lady whale, the husband waving his tail to her as long as he could see her. And yonder she is.”
“There is money there too,” said Archie reflectively. “If we could——”
“Stop just right there, mate mine. Not for all the gold in Ophir would I destroy the harmony of Nature by harpooning that innocent brute.”
The calf was ploughing round and round his huge and well-pleased mother—round and round, making the water fly in great green seas over her every time he struck it with his tail. But she lay more on her side at last, and those in the foretop could distinctly hear a long, low, cooing sound. Next moment the calf was as busy sucking as any baby ever was. Rough it was though, and the bumps it gave the dam every now and then made her shake and shiver like a ship in a sea-way.
But another strange thing the captain and mate noticed was this: All around the whale and calf flew gulls in hundreds. At so great a distance it was almost impossible to note what they were. Skuas, however, black-headed and white-headed gulls, the pilot-bird, the Greenland “malley,” and the beautiful ivory gull of Arctic regions were there. Their united voices filled the air with melody, and broke the stillness of this dark and silent sea.
Frequently they alighted on the whale, and seemed to be pecking at her, a liberty that the leviathan did not resent in the least.
In about half-an-hour’s time, however, the monster got her back uppermost. She lifted one great flipper, the calf seemed to cuddle under it, the huge tail was set in motion, making the sea all round like a boiling caldron, then she took a header under the water. The sound was like the springing of a submarine mine or the bursting of a torpedo, and raised waves that, rolling away in circles on every side, caused even the Zingara for a time to rise and fall on the water and weeds.
. . . . . .