When and where whales do sleep we have no means of knowing. They have been recorded as following ships for great distances, always keeping close by, and I have often heard them blow at night. My own theory is that they sleep while floating at the surface, either during the day or night, but I have little evidence with which to sustain it. Whales must have some means of communicating with each other of which we know nothing, for often the members of a school, even when widely separated, will leave the surface together and reappear at exactly the same instant. At times two whales will swim so closely together that their bodies are almost touching and this habit has given rise to stories, vouched for by reputable scientific men, about an unknown whale with two dorsal fins. I could never bring myself to believe these tales and often wondered how they originated, until one day, while hunting off the coast of Japan with Captain Anderson, we saw a so-called “double-finned” whale. A big finback was spouting in the distance and as we were following a sei whale which was very wild, the Captain decided to see if we could get a shot at the new arrival. [Illustration: Two humpback whales swimming close together at the surface. These animals were feeding and coming up to spout every few seconds. ] The whale was swimming at the surface and as we neared the animal two dorsal fins were plainly visible. Anderson was as excited as I because it seemed that we would certainly “get fast” to the mythical whale. We watched every movement of the animal as it slowly crossed our bows and we could see the second dorsal fin about two feet behind the first. Suddenly the animal spouted in a way that was unfamiliar to both of us, for the vapor column was very thick and plainly divided. We were within forty fathoms, almost near enough for a shot, before I realized that our strange cetacean was really two whales—a cow finback and her nearly grown calf. The latter was on the far side of the mother and was pressed closely to her side. Its dorsal fin appeared just behind that of its parent and while the whale was broadside to us we could see no other part of the calf’s body. Had we not been following the animal I should forever have been convinced that I had actually seen a double-finned whale. CHAPTER V THE PLAYFUL HUMPBACK The first whale which I ever saw “breach,” or jump out of the water, was a humpback in Alaska. We raised the whale’s spout half a mile away and ran up close before the animal sounded. It seemed certain that he would blow again, and with engines stopped the ship rolled slowly from side to side in the swell. The silence was intense and our nerves were strained to the breaking point.