Then she rose again, dashing to and fro in such evident “extreme agony” that one can only marvel at the men who were able to watch it unmoved. Two harpoons were flung at her, and failed to strike. A third succeeded; but still, absorbed in her little one’s peril, she paid no heed to her own injury, made no effort to get away, and “in the course of an hour” she was killed. That was in 1811. The same deed has been lately described by Mr. Bullen--the slaying of a mother-whale, which, with her infant by her side, refused to use her great strength in self-defence, lest she might hurt that little one. Such love as this should surely be respected, even by rough fishermen. If not in pity to the whale, another reason would suggest the same line of conduct. The folly of recklessly slaying the rising generation is beginning to be apparent. Already the supply of whales threatens to run short. Although one may speak of “little ones,” and although they are genuinely “little,” compared with grown-up specimens, one must not be led astray by the term. One very young baby-whale, when measured, was found to be about twenty feet long. A fine strapping infant! CHAPTER XXV. “DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS” “With Ships the Sea was sprinkled far and wide.”--WORDSWORTH. “Fair is our lot--O goodly is our heritage! (Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth!) For the Lord our God Most High, He hath made the Deep as dry, He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the Earth.” RUDYARD KIPLING. With Whales we have reached the highest class among Ocean creatures. Yet it is impossible to end here. Some few pages must be given to those among men who “go down to the Sea in ships,” who “do business in great waters.” Not that in any sense can Man be reckoned as an inhabitant of the “Mighty Deep.” But thousands of men spend the greater part of their lives upon the Deep; tens of thousands more continually pass and repass over its surface. In the beginning of history ships became soon a necessity, partly as a means of going from place to place along the coasts or of travelling to other Continents and Islands, and partly for the purpose of catching fish. Those early vessels were crude and ramshackle affairs, from a modern point of view. Unclothed and woad-stained Britons, ancestors to the Welsh of our day, had their boats, wood-ribbed and skin-covered, or osier-framed and hide-clothed. Rickety constructions at the best. Yet in them half-savage sailors went over the stormy Channels, to Ireland and to France, and even ventured into the Bay of Biscay. Enterprising Romans, with better ships, did more; and before the close of the First Century they had made their way round Great Britain. No light feat this, in days when lighthouses and buoys existed not; when the geography of sand-banks and rocks was unknown.