The orca, or “whale-killer” as the whalers call him, is one of the most powerful and rapacious animals in the world. Himself a whale, he is the only one of the species that lives on other whales, and does not hesitate to attack the largest of them. He grows to a length of thirty feet, and his activity and strength are extraordinary. One of them has been known to take a full-grown dead whale that the whalemen had in tow, grasp it in his tremendous jaws, and carry it to the bottom, in spite of its captors. One does not have to believe an old writer who says that a killer has been seen with a seal under each flipper, one under the dorsal fin, and a third in his mouth. Eschrit, however, is reckoned reliable, and we have his authority that a killer has been captured, from the stomach of which were taken thirteen porpoises and fourteen seals. The killer is shaped much like a whale, has great jaws filled with sharp teeth, and a pointed dorsal fin, with which he is fabled to dive beneath a whale and rip up his belly. He is found in all seas, but is particularly numerous in the North Pacific. In the far north he pursues the beluga or white whale and the walrus. He captures the young walrus in a novel manner. The latter climbs on the back of the mother and the great ivory tusks keep the orca at bay, but he dives beneath the old one and comes up against her with such a blow that the young one falls from the rounded back of its mother, when it is immediately seized and crushed in the great jaws of the rapacious animal. For a few moments nothing more was seen of either animal, and then, not his own length from the ship, the whale appeared, shooting up as if from a great depth, and flinging almost the whole of his great bulk straight into the air. The orca rose with him, his jaws set in the body of the whale just behind the left flipper. As the monster shook himself in agony, even when reared almost his whole length in the air, and with his great flukes beating the water beneath to foam, the hold of the orca was broken, and he fell back into the water beside the whale, leaving a great three-cornered tear in the whale’s side that dyed the water crimson as with another tremendous leap the wild wolf of the sea was again on his victim. Again Harry heard that strange half moan, half bellow, as the frenzied humpback ploughed along the surface to windward, beaten by the blows of the orca as he flung himself into the air, and again and again came down like an enormous club on his victim’s back. And thus the unequal contest went on, and Harry watched them till they disappeared in the distance to windward. He was much impressed by the spectacle. “How do you suppose it will come out?” he asked, as they clambered down from the rigging.