I was thinking of those flying fish as I stood by the rail that morning, and I had brought my old battered glass along. It was a calm morning, hot and sticky, the sea fairly quiet. Suddenly I saw what I thought must be a school of flying fish break the water about a quarter of a mile away and take their flight. They looked too big for flying fish, their flight in the air too short, and I brought my glass to bear. I soon caught them again, and they certainly did not look like fish, but I was not ready to believe they were what they looked like. I turned to Captain Coffin, and asked him. He stopped by my side, waving the glass away when I offered it to him. The creatures soon appeared again, coming out of the water in a spurt or gust. {325} “Oh,” he said, “flying squid.” “But,” I asked, “do squid fly?” He laughed. “No,” he said, “no more than flying fish fly—nor so much. As you see. There must be something chasing them.” At this moment the musical, quavering cry of the Admiral came down to us: “Bl-o-o-ows!” The spout was dead to windward, about five or six miles off. I, at any rate, could not see it from the deck, even with my glass, there was such a quiver of heated air at the horizon. Captain Nelson came on deck, went up to the main crosstrees, and stayed there for some time, watching. When he came down Captain Coffin asked him what he made of it. “Can’t make out,” he answered. “Something queer going on. May be swordfish, or perhaps those big sharks; or killers, except for the latitude. We ’ll stand up that way as fast as we can.” “Lower, sir?” Mr. Baker asked, knowing well what the answer was likely to be. Captain Nelson shook his head. “Not yet.” It took us a long time to get up anywhere near, but the spout remained very nearly stationary, and there was considerable white water raised about it. The light breeze, nearly dead ahead, died out, and we wallowed there for a quarter of an hour, in a flat calm. But we were near enough to see what was going on, and I watched through my glass. There were two whales instead of one, very different in size. The smaller of the two seemed to be the centre of the commotion, and I caught several glimpses of bodies, gleaming brightly as they broke the surface for an instant. There must have been five or six of them, but I could not tell certainly whether they were sharks or swordfish or what. I had never seen a killer. The larger whale was making short, savage dashes at the attacking fish, but without any marked result, so far as I could see. {326} I handed the glass to Captain Coffin. “Won’t you look, sir, and tell me what they are?” “I don’t really need the glass, boy,” he said, “to tell me that they ’re sharks.” But he took it, and held it to his eyes. “Sharks; big devils, twenty-five or thirty feet long. That whale ’s a small cow, and she must have a small calf under her fin. That ’s what the sharks are after, and they ’ll get it, too, if we don’t get a breeze pretty quick.”