A Sack of Shakings

Shining serenely as some immeasurable mirror beneath the smiling face of heaven, the solitary ocean lay in unrippled silence. It was in those placid latitudes south of the line in the Pacific, where weeks, aye months, often pass without the marginless blue level being ruffled by any wandering keel. Here, in almost perfect security from molestation by man, the innumerable denizens of the deep pursue their never-ending warfare, doubtless enjoying to the full the brimming cup of life, without a weary moment, and with no dreary anticipations of an unwanted old age.

Now it fell on a day that the calm surface of that bright sea was broken by the sudden upheaval of a compact troop of sperm whales from the inscrutable depths wherein they had been roaming and recruiting their gigantic energies upon the abundant molluscs, hideous of mien and insatiable of maw, that, like creations of a diseased mind, lurked far below the sunshine. The school consisted of seven cows and one mighty bull, who was unique in appearance, for instead of being in colour the unrelieved sepia common to his kind he was curiously mottled with creamy white, making the immense oblong cube of his head look like a weather-worn monolith of Siena marble. Easeful as any Arabian khalif, he lolled supine upon the glittering folds of his couch, the welcoming wavelets caressing his vast form with gentlest touch, and murmuring softly as by their united efforts they rocked him in rhythm with their melodic lullaby. Around him glided his faithful harem—gentle timid creatures, no one of them a third of their lord’s huge bulk, but still majestic in their proportions, being each some forty-five feet in length by thirty in girth. Unquestionably the monarch of the flood, their great chief accepted in complacent dignity their unremitting attentions, nor did their playful gambols stir him in the least from his attitude of complete repose.

But while the busy seven were thus disporting themselves in happy security there suddenly appeared among them a delightful companion in the shape of a newly-born calf, elegantly dappled like his sire, the first-born son of the youngest mother in the group. It is not the habit of the cachalot to show that intense self-effacing devotion to its young which is evinced by other mammals, especially whales of the mysticetæ. Nevertheless, as the expectation of this latest addition to the family had been the reason of their visit to these quiet latitudes, his coming made a pleasant little ripple of satisfaction vibrate throughout the group. Even the apparently impenetrable stolidity of the head of the school was aroused into some faint tokens of interest in the new-comer, who clung leech-like to his mother’s side, vigorously draining the enormous convexity of her bosom of its bounteous flood of milk. So well did he thrive, that at the end of a week the youngster was able to hold his own with the school in a race, and competent also to remain under water quite as long as his mother. Then the stately leader signified to his dependants that the time was now at hand when they must change their pleasant quarters. Food was less plentiful than it had been, which was but natural, remembering the ravages necessarily made by such a company of monsters. Moreover, a life of continual ease and slothful luxury such as of late had been theirs was not only favourable to the growth of a hampering investiture of parasites—barnacles, limpets, and weed—all over their bodies, but it completely unfitted them for the stern struggle awaiting them, when in their periodical progress round the world they should arrive on the borders of the fierce Antarctic Zone. And besides all these, had they forgotten that they were liable to meet with man! A sympathetic shudder ran through every member of the school at that dreaded name, under the influence of which they all drew closer around their chief, sweeping their broad flukes restlessly from side to side and breathing inaudibly.