“You think right, Jack,” observed Dick Sand, “that Madam Whale does not lose time in picking these crustaceans one by one, as you pick shrimps.”

“I may add,” said Captain Hull, “that it is just when the enormous gourmand is occupied in this way, that it is easiest to approach it without exciting its suspicion.  That is the favorable moment to harpoon it with some success.”

At that instant, and as if to corroborate Captain Hull, a sailor’s voice was heard from the front of the ship: 

“A whale to larboard!”

Captain Hull strode up.

“A whale!” cried he.

And his fisherman’s instinct urging him, he hastened to the “Pilgrim’s” forecastle.

Mrs. Weldon, Jack, Dick Sand, Cousin Benedict himself, followed him at once.

In fact, four miles to windward a certain bubbling indicated that a huge marine mammifer was moving in the midst of the red waters.  Whalers could not be mistaken in it.  But the distance was still too considerable to make it possible to recognize the species to which this mammifer belonged.  These species, in fact, are quite distinct.

Was it one of those “right” whales, which the fishermen of the Northern Ocean seek most particularly?  Those cetaceans, which lack the dorsal fin, but whose skin covers a thick stratum of lard, may attain a length of eighty feet, though the average does not exceed sixty, and then a single one of those monsters furnishes as much as a hundred barrels of oil.

Was it, on the contrary, a “humpback,” belonging to the species of baloenopters, a designation whose termination should at least gain it the entomologist’s esteem?  These possess dorsal fins, white in color, and as long as half the body, which resemble a pair of wings—­something like a flying whale.

Had they not in view, more likely, a “finback” mammifer, as well known by the name “jubarte,” which is provided with a dorsal fin, and whose length may equal that of the “right” whale?

Captain Hull and his crew could not yet decide, but they regarded the animal with more desire than admiration.

If it is true that a clockmaker cannot find himself in a room in the presence of a clock without experiencing the irresistible wish to wind it up, how much more must the whaler, before a whale, be seized with the imperative desire to take possession of it?  The hunters of large game, they say, are more eager than the hunters of small game.  Then, the larger the animal, the more it excites covetousness.  Then, how should hunters of elephants and fishers of whalers feel?  And then there was that disappointment, felt by all the “Pilgrim’s” crew, of returning with an incomplete cargo.

Meanwhile, Captain Hull tried to distinguish the animal which had been signaled in the offing.  It was not very visible from that distance.  Nevertheless, the trained eye of a whaler could not be deceived in certain details easier to discern at a distance.