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But in spite of the new inspiring sense of conscious might and ability to do even as his forefathers had done, his loneliness was heavy upon him. For, like all mammals, the cachalot loves the fellowship of his kin during the days of his strength; and only when advancing age renders him unable to hold his own against jealous rivals, or makes him a laggard in the united chase, does he forsake the school and wander solitary and morose about the infinite solitude of his limitless abode. And so, surrounded by the abundant evidences of his prowess, the young giant meditated, while a hungry host of sharks, like jackals at the lion’s kill, came prowling up out of the surrounding silence, and with shrill cries of delight the hovering bird-folk gathered in myriads to take tithe of his enormous spoil. Unheeding the accumulating multitudes, who gave him ample room and verge enough, and full of flesh, he lay almost motionless, when suddenly that subtle sense which, attuned to the faintest vibrations of the mobile sea, kept him warned, informed him that some more than ordinary commotion was in progress not many miles away. Instantly every sinew set taut, every nerve tingled with receptivity, while, quivering like some fucus frond in a tide rip, his broad tail swayed silently to and fro, but so easily as not to stir his body from its attitude of intense expectation. A gannet swept over him close down, startling him so that with one fierce lunge of his flukes he sprang forward twenty yards; but recovering himself he paused again, though the impetus still bore him noiselessly ahead, the soothing wash of the waves eddying gently around his blunt bow. Shortly after, to his unbounded joy, a noble company of his own folk hove in sight, two score of them in goodliest array. They glided around him in graceful curves, wonderingly saluting him by touching his small body with fin, nose, and tail, and puzzled beyond measure as to how so young a fellow-citizen came to be inhabiting these vast wastes alone. His tale was soon told, for the whale-people waste no interchange of ideas, and the company solemnly received him into their midst as a comrade who had well earned the right to be one of their band by providing for them so great a feast. Swiftly the spoil of that gigantic mollusc was rescued from the marauding sharks, and devoured; and thorough was the subsequent search among those deep-lying darknesses for any other monsters of the same breed that might lie brooding in their depths. None were to be found, although for two days and nights the questing leviathans pursued their keen investigations. When there remained no longer a cave unfathomed or a maze unexplored, the leader of the school, a huge black bull of unrivalled fame, gave the signal for departure, and away they went in double columns, line ahead, due south, their splendid chief about a cable’s length in advance. The happy youngster, no longer astray from his kind, gambolled about the school in unrestrained delight at the rising tide of life that surged tumultuously through his vigorous frame. Ah; it was so good to be alive, glorious to speed, with body bending bow-wise, and broad fan-like flukes spurning the brilliant waves behind him, ecstasy to exert all the power he felt in one mad upward rush until out into the sunlight high through the warm air he sprang, a living embodiment of irresistible force, and fell with a joyous crash back into the welcoming bosom of his native deep. The sedate patriarch of the school looked on these youthful freaks indulgently, until, fired by the sight of his young follower’s energy, he too put forth all his incredible strength, launching his hundred tons or so of solid weight clear of the embracing sea, and returning to it again with a shock as of some Polyphemus-hurled mountain.