Twenty-seven years later, in 1875, the officers and crew of the barque _Pauline_, whilst sailing in the Indian seas, had a still more interesting experience. They were, one day, watching three large sperm-whales not far from the ship, when a most enormous serpent, shooting suddenly out of the water by the side of the largest one, encircled it in two coils of its body, and in about fifteen minutes, during which time there was a terrific struggle between the two leviathans, succeeded in crushing it to death. This, at least, may be assumed, for one by one the ribs of the unfortunate whale were heard to crack, with a sound resembling the report of a small cannon, and, at the end of the time stated, the snake dived downwards, carrying its victim with it, head first. When one thinks of the enormous strength of a large bull cachalot, which may be from fifty to eighty feet in length, one can form some idea of that of the monster by whom it was overpowered, yet possibly it was not so much the strength of the great serpent as the application of it, by which the whale was vanquished. Could it have got any portion of the sinuous body within its vast toothed jaws, or could it have delivered a blow upon it with its mighty tail, the issue of the combat might have been different; but enveloped in a double noose, each foot of which was charged with enormous constricting power, its strength was choked out of it; and as the serpent’s tail—or that part of it beyond the folds on one side—no doubt hung down in the water, whilst as much of the neck as was disengaged on the other would have been equally out of harm’s way, what could the whale, who was all the time suffocating, do? Neither with jaws nor tail would any effective reply have been open to him. He might almost as easily have struck or bitten himself, as the preposterous enemy that was wreathed so closely about him.