walruses on the ledges three miles away. Every seal that heard it
shuddered and dived, and an old white bear, prowling along the desolate
beach in search of dead fish, lifted his lean head and listened
nervously.

"Only the swordfish paid no attention to that tremendous and desperate
cry. In the midst of it he made another rush, missed the calf by a
handbreadth, and buried his sword to the socket in the mother's side.

"At this the old whale seemed to lose her wits. Still clutching the
terrified calf under one flipper, she stood straight on her head, so
that the head and half her body were below the surface, and fell to
lashing the water all around her with ponderous, deafening blows of her
tail. The huge concussions drove the swordfish from the surface, and
for a minute or two he swam around her in a wide circle, about twenty
feet down, trying to get the hang of these queer tactics. Then, swift
and smooth as a shadow, he shot in diagonally, well below the range of
those crashing strokes. His sword went clean through the body of the
calf, through its heart, killing it instantly, and at the same time
forcing it from its mother's hold. The lifeless but still quivering
form fixed thus firmly on his sword, he darted away with it, and was
instantly lost to view beyond the dense, churned hosts of the pink
shrimps.

"For perhaps a minute the mother, as if bewildered by the violence of
her own exertions, seemed quite unaware of what had happened. At
length she stopped lashing the water, came slowly to the surface stared
about her in a dazed way, and once more bellowed forth her terrible
booming cry. Once more the seabirds sprang terrified to the upper air,
and the old white bear on the far-off shore lifted his head once more