Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches онлайн

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But now all attention is concentrated upon the horizon, where the trained eye has caught a glimpse of something of greater interest than either bird or fish. A series of tiny puffs, apparently of steam, rises from the shining surface, but so evanescent that nothing but long-practised vision would discern them at so great a distance. Irregularly, both as to time and position, they appear, a shadowy procession of faintest indefinite outlines, a band of brief shadows. Yet upon them eager eyes are bent in keenest attention, for they represent possibilities of substantial gain, and bring the mind back from the realms of pure romance with the swiftness of a diving sea-bird down to the hard necessities of everyday life. They are the breathings of marine mammalia, mightiest of ocean’s citizens, and strangest of links between the inhabitants of land and sea. A little keen scrutiny, however, reveals the disappointing fact that those feathery phantoms mark the presence of that special species of whales who enjoy complete immunity from attack either from above or below. Their marvellous agility, no less than the exiguous covering of fat to which they have reduced the usually massive blubber borne by their congeners, gives abundant reason why they should be thus unmolested. So they roam the teeming seas in the enviable, as well as almost unique, position among the marine fauna of exemption from death, except by sickness or old age, as much as any sedate, law-abiding citizen of London. They seem to be well aware of their privileges, for they draw near the ship with perfect confidence, heeding her huge shadow no more than if she were a mass of rock rising sheer from the ocean-bed, and incapable of harm to any of the sea-folk. From our lofty eyrie we watch with keenest interest the antics of these great creatures, their amatory gambols, parental care, elegant ease, and keen sportiveness. Yonder piebald monster, who seems the patriarch of the school, after basking placidly in the scorching rays of the sun, now high in the heavens, gravely turns a semi-somersault, elevating the rear half of his body (some forty feet or so) out of the water. Then with steady, tremendous strokes he beats the water, the hundred square feet of his tail falling flatly with a reverberation like the sound of a distant bombardment. The others leap out of water, sedately as becomes their bulk, or roll over and over each other upon the surface, occasionally settling down until they look like fish of a foot or so in length. They even dare to chafe their barnacle-studded sides against the vessel’s keel, sending a strange tremor through her from stem to stern, which is even felt in the “crow’s nest.” But no one molests them in any way; in fact, it must be placed to the whaler’s credit that he rarely takes life for “sport,” though callous as iron where profit of any kind may be secured.