There was among our crew one Ned Land, a gigantic Canadian of forty, who was considered to be the prince of harpooners.  Many a whale had received its deathblow from him, and he was eager to flesh his harpoon in this redoubtable cetacean which had terrified the marine world.

Week after week passed without any sign that our quest would be successful.  Indeed, after nearly four months had gone, and we had explored the whole of the Japanese and Chinese coasts, the captain reached the point of deciding to return, when one night the voice of Ned Land was heard calling: 

“Look out there!  The thing we are looking for on our weather-beam!”

At this cry the entire crew rushed towards the harpooner—­captain, officers, masters, sailors, and cabin-boys; even the engineers left their engines, and the stokers their furnaces.  The frigate was now moving only by her own momentum, for the engines had been stopped.

My heart beat violently.  I was sure the harpooner’s eyes had not deceived him.  Soon we could all see, about two cables’ length away, a strange and luminous object, lying some fathoms below the surface, just as described in many of the reports.  One of the officers suggested that it was merely an enormous mass of phosphorous particles, but I replied with conviction that the light was electric.  And even as I spoke the strange thing began to move towards us!

The captain immediately reversed engines and put on full speed, but the luminous monster gained on us and played round the frigate with frightful rapidity.  Its light would go out suddenly and reappear again on the other side of the vessel.  It was clearly too great a risk to attack the thing in the dark, and by midnight it disappeared, dying out like a huge glow-worm.  It appeared again, about five miles to the windward, at two in the morning, coming up to the surface as if to breathe, and it seemed as though the air rushed into its huge lungs like steam in the vast cylinders of a 2,000 horse-power engine.

“Hum!” said I.  “A whale with the strength of a cavalry regiment would be a pretty whale!”

II.—­The Attack and After

Everything was in readiness to attack with the coming of the dawn, and Ned Land was calmly sharpening his great harpoon, but by six in the morning the thing had again disappeared, and a thick sea-fog made it impossible to observe its further movements.  At eight o’clock, however, the mist had begun to clear, and then, as suddenly as on the night before, Ned Land’s voice was heard calling:  “The thing on the port-quarter!”

There it was, surely enough, a mile and a half away, now a large black body showing above the waves, and leaving a track of dazzling white as its great tail beat the water into foam.

Moving rapidly, it approached within twenty feet of the frigate.  Ned stood ready at the bow to hurl his harpoon, and the monster was now shining again with that strange light which dazzled our eyes.  All at once he threw the harpoon.  It struck on a hard body.