“No,” said he, “it ith’nt moving. I thought it wath a whirlwind firtht. I thay tho’—what the doothe—tain’t a windmill, ith it?”
I now saw, as he had seen, what resembled the vanes of a windmill revolving in the foam—a wet black arm that rose and fell out of the white seething like to the blades of a propeller rotating under the counter of a tall light steamer, amidst the boiling of the water churned up by the machine.
“See that thrasher!” suddenly shouted the chief mate. “By George, gentlemen and ladies, a fight between a thrasher and a whale, as I live! A rare sight, truly!”
And all the passengers who were on deck came rushing with him over to the side to look. As we approached, the spectacle grew in magnitude, and proved one of the wildest—I may say one of the most terrific—pictures which the imagination could body forth, even of the sea—that arena of wonders and of terrors. There was so much fury of foaming water, that it was hard to distinguish the gigantic combatants. Yet now and again I would catch a sight of a large space of the gleaming dark body of a leviathan whale, upon which the great arms of the thrasher were beating in blows, the echoes of which had something of a metallic twang in them that made you think of a giant blacksmith striking upon an enormous anvil. The boiling commotion covered a large space of water, and might easily have passed for the first fierce foamings of a waterspout.
I watched, breathless with astonishment and awe, my eyes half out of my head. Here was something to talk about to my father and mother! But would they believe it? It was a sight I could scarcely credit, specially when Kennet told me that what I saw of the whale was only a little bit of him.
“Will the thrasher kill him?” said I.
“I expect tho,” he answered; “anyhow, of the two, I’d thooner not be the whale.”
When the monster duellists had settled down upon our quarter, the long black arms suddenly vanished. The seething turmoil expired into smooth water, and the swell rolled flawless as before.
“The whale’th killed,” said Kennet; “keep a bright look-out, Rockafellar, and you’ll thee his body rithe.”