The crew were all on deck. "Shall we try, sir?" asked Tom Turner.

"Yes," said Robur.

In the engine-room the engineer and his assistant were at their posts
ready to obey the orders signaled to them. The "Albatross" dropped
towards the sea, and remained, about fifty feet above it.

There was no ship in sight--of that the two colleagues soon assured
themselves--nor was there any land to be seen to which they could
swim, providing Robur made no attempt to recapture them.

Several jets of water from the spout holes soon announced the
presence of the whales as they came to the surface to breathe. Tom
Turner and one of the men were in the bow. Within his reach was one
of those javelin-bombs, of Californian make, which are shot from an
arquebus and which are shaped as a metallic cylinder terminated by a
cylindrical shell armed with a shaft having a barbed point. Robur was
a little farther aft, and with his right hand signaled to the
engineers, while with his left, he directed the steersman. He thus
controlled the aeronef in every way, horizontally and vertically, and
it is almost impossible to conceive with what speed and precision the
"Albatross" answered to his orders. She seemed a living being, of
which he was the soul.

"A whale! A whale!" shouted Tom Turner, as the back of a cetacean
emerged from the surface about four cable-lengths in front of the
"Albatross."