“Yes, sir,” replied Harry. “It seems like dreams coming true to think that I am to see the things that I have read about this side of the world, but never really expected to see with my own eyes.” The captain smiled. “You’ll see strange sights, my boy, before you get home,” he said, and there was more of prophecy in this than either of them dreamed at the time. “Are we liable to do any whaling right away?” asked Harry. “Well, that depends,” replied the captain. “There is now and then a humpback in these waters, but they are pretty shy nowadays, and hard to come up with. They’re hardly worth while. I doubt if we shall lower a boat before we get into Bering Sea and get among the bowheads as they follow the ice up. We are likely to see a whale, though, most any time now.” “I wish we could,” said Harry, the ardor of the sportsman beginning to thrill in his veins; but no whale appeared that day, though he watched the sea with patience and undiminishing ardor. A day or two afterward, as he came on deck, he saw a little cloud on the surface of the water like the puff of smoke that follows the discharge of a rifle loaded with black powder. A moment after another puff shot into the air quite near the ship, and he saw beneath it a black body rise languidly to the surface, loll along it a moment, and then sink again. His heart gave a great jump. A whale! Why had none of the crew seen it? To be sure they were not on watch for whales, but still several were on deck, and the first mate, whose watch it was, was pacing leisurely back and forth behind him as he stood at the rail. The mate now and then glanced at the sails to see how they were drawing, and now and then shot a command, a single word if possible, to the crew for a pull on the braces, or something of that sort, but he seemed to take no notice of the puff of smoke and the black body just showing above the surface almost alongside. Harry looked again. Yes, it was there, so near that he could see that the little puff of smoke was a cloud or vapor blown with a whiff into the air from one end of this black body. He could stand it no longer, but rushed up to the mate, grasped his arm, pointed in the direction of his discovery, and said excitedly, “See, see! There he is! Don’t you see the whale?” “Nope,” calmly replied the taciturn first mate, gazing at the little puff of vapor and the black body. “Isn’t—isn’t it a whale?” faltered Harry, a little ashamed of his enthusiasm in the face of this stolidity. “Nope,” said the first mate. “But it looks like a whale,” persisted Harry; “and it acts like a whale, at least as I have read that they acted. What is it, then?” “Blackfish,” said the mate, with a sweep of his hand to the other side of the ship. Harry looked in that direction, and was silent in astonishment and delight. “Hundreds!” said the mate, and resumed his walk on the deck.