“BY A SUPREME EFFORT SHE HURLED HER WHOLE GREAT BULK CLEAR OF THE WATER.”

Presently the spellbound spectators realized two facts—firstly, that the calf had disappeared in the mêlée, and secondly, that, the tortured whale was undoubtedly becoming weaker. It was obvious that the unequal struggle could have only one ending. Still, however, she fought on doggedly, winning admiration and sympathy by her exhibition of hopeless courage. Altering her tactics, by a supreme effort she hurled her whole great bulk clear of the water for a moment, and the fascinated onlookers beheld the sharks hanging from various parts of her gleaming body by their serrated teeth. Then down she went again, with a crash like thunder, and for an instant whale and sharks were buried amidst masses of foam, heavily coloured with the poor mammal’s life-blood. Rising again, she essayed another change of plan, making for the rocks and desperately striving to rub off the clinging sharks against their edges. But the threshers were equal to the occasion; while those on the outside maintained their grip, the others dived under their enemy and charged her anew, tearing at the whale’s side in an ecstasy of ferocity that was bloodcurdling to witness.

TERRIFIC BATTLE AT BREAKSEA ISLAND.
WHALE KILLED BY THRASHER SHARKS.
A THREE HOURS’ FIGHT.
A SEA OF BLOOD.
(By An Eye Witness.)

Much has been written about fights between the larger denizens of the sea, but it has fallen to the lot of very few to witness such a battle as one which took place off Breaksea Island on Friday, the 14th inst., between a school of thrasher sharks and a cow

A CUTTING FROM THE “WEST AUSTRALIAN,” OF PERTH, W.A., REFERRING TO THE BATTLE BETWEEN A WHALE AND THRESHER SHARKS.
[Click here for image.]

More and more feeble grew the whale’s struggles, and at last—to the heartfelt relief of the spectators, for her death-fight had been terrible to behold—the great body turned over and sank beneath the red-tinted water. The unequal battle was over, having lasted from nine o’clock until noon—as awe-inspiring a contest as man was ever privileged to witness. It is a thousand pities that there was no camera on the island to make a pictorial record of the struggle. The men went back to their work greatly impressed by the unique spectacle, and expressions of sympathy for the whale were heard on every side.

Forty-eight hours afterwards the whale’s carcass, which had in the meantime become distended with gas, rose to the surface, and exploded with a roar like a miniature powder-magazine, causing the startled people to flock to the shore to discover what had happened. On examination of the remains it was discovered that every shred of the outer flesh of the whale had been torn off by the sharks, who had now, doubtless, gone off to repeat their tactics upon some other hapless leviathan.

A BATTLE IN MID-AIR.
By T. R. Porter.

Swinging like a pendulum at the end of a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot rope against the side of a five-hundred-foot cliff, with jagged rocks far below, and nothing but one bare hand with which to fight off the fierce onslaught of an immense eagle, whose nest he was attempting to rob—this was the awful predicament in which Arthur Williams, a young man of Riverton, Wyoming, found himself one day early in June last year. With the welfare of her nestlings at stake, the great bird attacked the despoiler of her home with inconceivable fury, and only to a lucky chance does Williams owe his life.