“It was not Eric who sighted the whale, but one of the men on the foret’gallant crosstrees; and his long ‘Blo-o-o-o-o-ow’ came droning down to us on the decks and snatched each one to his post like machinery. Cap’n Tobbey turned his glass on the distant spouts, and ordered the boats away; and Eric’s hard and seasoned men made his boat swing ahead of the others instantly, and steadily increase the lead. “There was no way of knowing whether or no this was the old, scarred bull; but his spout told us it was a right whale, and not a sperm whale. Nevertheless, either Eric knew it was his enemy he went to meet, or else he was eager to discover whether it was or no, for he drove his men unsparingly, and was more than a quarter of a mile ahead of us when he reached the monster, and ran alongside. “Over the water came to us the sound of his shouted command: ‘Let ‘im have it!’ And I saw the boatsteerer, standing in the bow with his knee in the clumsy-cleat, put all the strength of back and arms into the stroke, and snatch the second iron and send that home even as the whale leaped forward. “While Eric and the boatsteerer were changing places, the great whale up-ended ponderously, his flukes lifting gently toward the sky full thirty feet clear of the water, and slid down out of sight. He had sounded; and I spurred my men to harder efforts so that we might be at hand to help if need arose. “Ahead of us, the boat lay idle on the waves. I could see Eric in the bow, his hand on the line where it ran through the notch, bending to peer down into the depths; and I could see he was putting a strain upon the line, for the bow was down and almost dipping in the waves. “Then suddenly the bow bobbed up, the strain relaxed; and Eric bent further over in an effort to pierce the depths below him. The whale was coming up; and if by chance he came up under the boat, the fight would be done, forthwith. Eric shouted a command; and the men began to haul in the line desperately, dropping it in a loose coil astern. The boatsteerer leaned upon his oar, alert, bending to hear the word from Eric, and himself looking overside for any sign of the monster who was rushing up from the depths toward them. “Then a shout from Eric, the boat swung around as though on a pivot; and next instant the whale breached between his boat and mine. “There is no more splendid sight in the world than this; to see the biggest creature that breathes flinging his four or five score tons clear out of the water to hang, a black bulk against the sky, for an instant before he falls resoundingly. Imagine a leaping trout, magnify the trout’s size a millionfold or more, and you have some faint notion of the monstrous majesty and grace of the breaching whale. “I had seen whales breach before, sometimes with terror, sometimes with wonder at the beauty of the spectacle; but when this whale leaped clear into the sky and seemed to hang for an instant fair above us, a thrill of horror shot through me.