But the others paid no attention to our South Sea island savage. They were intent just then on tragedy. Their boat struck the whale at its next rise. The animal went into a violent flurry. It beat the sea into a lather with fins and flukes and darted around on its side in a semi-circle, clashing its great jaws, until it finally collapsed and lay limp and lifeless. The whale struck by the other boat from the Reindeer ran out a tub of line, but a second boat had come up in time to bend on its own line and took the animal in tow. Before the whale had run out this new tub, a third boat harpooned it. With two boats fast to it, it continued its flight to windward and was at least two miles from us when its pursuers at last overtook and killed it. Two boats from the _Helen Marr_ struck whales while the monsters were feeding within an oar's length of each other. One whale started off at right angles to the direction taken by the other. It looked for a time as if the two lines would become entangled and the boats would crash together. But the whale that cut across the other's course swam above the latter's line and dragged its boat so swiftly after it that a collision was averted by a few feet. One of the whales was bombed and killed after a short flight. The other acted in a way that whales hardly ever act. It ran hard to windward at first, as whales usually do when struck. Then it suddenly turned and ran in an exactly opposite direction. This unexpected change in its course almost upset the boat, which was jerked violently over on its beam-ends and spun round like a top, while the crew held on for dear life and barely escaped being pitched into the sea. Once righted and on its way again, the boat rapidly hauled up on the whale, whose fast-going vitality showed in its diminished speed. After a flight that had covered at least a mile, the whale was finally killed close to the spot at which it had first been struck. When, the sharp, fast work of the boats ended, five mighty carcasses lay stretched upon the sea. The great whale drive, which had lasted less than an hour, had bagged game worth something like $60,000. The three ships soon sailed to close quarters and the boats had a comparatively easy time getting the whales alongside. That night the try-works were started and big cressets whose flames were fed by "scrap" flared up on all the ships, lighting them in ghostly-wise from the deck to the topmost sail.