The whale here spouted and fluked his tail, diving down for a moment beneath the surface; but, he did not long disappear, and when he came up shortly afterwards nearer the ship, the spectators could see that the water around him was dyed with blood.
As the black-fish rose, the thresher, who evidently had been waiting for him and knew the precise spot where he would reappear, threw himself up in the air, turning a sort of summersault; and, “whack!” came his whip-like tail round his victim’s body, the whale seeming to writhe under the blow as if driven half mad with pain.
“Look, look!” exclaimed Florry Meldrum, “the thresher isn’t alone; what are those long-nosed fishes swimming about under the whale? They seem to be helping the other one!”
“You’re right, Florry,” said her father, “they are swordfish. What you think are their noses are long projecting saw-like blades, and they are the whale’s deadliest enemy. I never saw them, however, attacking one in company with a thresher before: they must have formed an alliance for the express purpose, as they have really nothing in common.”
“It reminds me, mister,” said the American, putting a chew of tobacco in his mouth pensively, “of a bull fit I once see in Carthagena when I was to Spain some years ago. That air thresher is jist like the feller all fixed up with lace and fallals called the Piccador, who used to stir up the animile with squibs and crackers and make him fly round like a dawg when he’s kinder tickled with a flea under his tail; and the sword-fish, as you calls them outlandish things, are sunthen’ like the Matador that gives the bull his quietus with his wepping. That air power of blood that you see, I guess, is from them, and not from t’other’s cow-hide of a tail!”
“Golly, massa, you speaks for true,” said Snowball, who formed one of the party of lookers-on, abandoning his coppers in the galley in order to see the fun. “Bress de Lord! see how dat long snout chap dere gib him goss now!”
It really seemed an organised attack.
As soon as the back of the black-fish appeared above the surface, the thresher, springing several yards out of the water, descended with great violence on the object of its rancour and inflicted what sounded like a hearty slap with its tail, the sword-fishes in their turn striking the whale from below; so that, try how he might, the unhappy monster of the deep could not escape his persevering foes.
“Sure and be jabers it bates Donnybrook Fair entirely!” said Mr McCarthy, who had also come up from below, the news having also reached him of what was taking place. “The poor baste will soon be bate into a cocked hat with all them ragamuffins on to him at once! It’s liking to help him I’d be if I saw the chance!”
But the doom of the black-fish was evidently by this time sealed and human aid was powerless to assist him: all could see for themselves that the last act in the drama was close at hand!