“Backwater!” he shouted.

The sailors pushed back with all their might, and the boat in an instant was beyond the range of the creature’s tail.

And now the immoveableness of the animal was at once accounted for.

“See; there’s a youngster!” exclaimed Howick.

And he was not mistaken. Startled by the blow of the harpoon the monster had heeled over on to its side, and the movement revealed a young whale which the mother had been disturbed in the act of suckling. It was a discovery which made Captain Hull aware that the capture of the whale would be attended with double difficulty; he knew; that she would defend “her little one” (if such a term can be applied to a creature that was at least twenty feet long) with the most determined fury; yet having made what he considered a successful commencement of the attack, he would not be daunted, nor deterred from his endeavour to secure so fine a prize.

The whale did not, as sometimes happens, make a precipitate dash upon the boat, a proceeding which necessitates the instant cutting of the harpoon-line, and an immediate retreat, but it took the far more usual course of diving downwards almost perpendicularly. It was followed by its calf; very soon, however, after rising once again to the surface with a sudden bound, it began swimming along under water with great rapidity.

Before its first plunge Captain Hull and Howick had sufficient opportunity to observe that it was an unusually large balaenoptera, measuring at least eighty feet from head to tail, its colour being of a yellowish-brown, dappled with numerous spots of a darker shade.

The pursuit, or what may be more aptly termed “the towing,” of the whale had now fairly commenced. The sailors had shipped their oars, and the whale-boat darted like an arrow along the surface of the waves. In spite of the osc