lose time in picking these crustaceans one by one, as you pick shrimps."

"I may add," said Captain Hull, "that it is just when the enormous
gourmand is occupied in this way, that it is easiest to approach it
without exciting its suspicion. That is the favorable moment to harpoon
it with some success."

At that instant, and as if to corroborate Captain Hull, a sailor's
voice was heard from the front of the ship:

"A whale to larboard!"

Captain Hull strode up.

"A whale!" cried he.

And his fisherman's instinct urging him, he hastened to the "Pilgrim's"
forecastle.

Mrs. Weldon, Jack, Dick Sand, Cousin Benedict himself, followed him at
once.

In fact, four miles to windward a certain bubbling indicated that a
huge marine mammifer was moving in the midst of the red waters. Whalers
could not be mistaken in it. But the distance was still too
considerable to make it possible to recognize the species to which this
mammifer belonged. These species, in fact, are quite distinct.

Was it one of those "right" whales, which the fishermen of the Northern
Ocean seek most particularly? Those cetaceans, which lack the dorsal