of one of her kinsmen.  A spiteful flame leapt from its head.  Then a sharp thunder came rapping across the waves, and she saw her giant kinsman hurl himself clear into the air.  He fell back with a terrific splash, which set the monster rolling, and, for perhaps a minute, his struggles lashed the sea into foam.  Then he lay still, and soon she saw him drawn slowly up till he clung close to the monster’s side.  This unheard-of action filled her with a terror that was quite sickening.  Clutching her calf tremblingly under her fin she plunged once more into the deep, and, traveling as fast as possible for the little one, at a depth of perhaps two hundred feet, she headed for another feeding ground where she trusted that the monster might not follow.

“When she came again to the surface, fifteen minutes later, the monster and all her spouting kinsfolk were out of sight, hidden behind a mile-long mountain of blue ice-berg.  But she was not satisfied.  Remaining up less than two minutes, to give the calf time for breath, she hurriedly plunged again and continued her journey.  When this manoeuver had been repeated half a dozen times she began to feel more at ease.  At last she came to a halt, and lay rocking in the seas just off the mouth of a spacious rock-rimmed bay.

“Here, as luck would have it, she found herself in the midst of the food which she loved best.  The leaden green of the swells was all flushed and stained with pale pink.  This unusual color was caused by hordes of tiny, shrimplike creatures—­distant cousins of those which you like so well in a salad.  The whale preferred them in the form of soup, so she went sailing slowly through them with her cavernous mouth very wide open.  Every now and then she would shut her jaws and give two or three great gulps, and her little eyes, away back at the base of her skull, would almost twinkle with satisfaction.

“But, as it appeared, she was not the only one that liked shrimps.  The air was full of wings and screams, where gulls, gannets, and skuas swooped and splashed, quarrelling because they got in one another’s way at the feast.  Also, here and there a heavy, sucking swirl on the smooth slope of a wave would show where some very big fish was taking toll of the pinky swarms.  The whale kept her eye on these ponderous swirls with a certain amount of suspicion, though not really anticipating any danger here.

“She was just about coming to the conclusion that one can have enough, even of shrimps, when, glancing downwards, she caught sight of a long, slender, deadly-looking shape slanting up toward her through a space of clear water between the armies of the shrimps.  She knew that grim shape all too well, and it was darting straight at her baby, its terrible sword standing out keen and straight from its pointed snout.

“In spite of her immense bulk and apparently clumsy form, the whale was capable of marvelously quick action.  You see, except for her head she was all one bundle of muscle.  Swift as thought, she whipped herself clear round, between her calf and the upward rush of the swordfish.  She was just in time.  The thrust that would have gone clean through the calf, splitting its heart in two, went deep into her own side.