A Eight with a Whale,

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 2, Issue 246, 19 January 1881, Page 2

A Eight with a Whale,

Lord Archibald Campbell sends to the Scotsman the following account of a battle of which he was a witness, between a thresher, sword-fish and a whale, offßelleisle, at ,5 p.m. on September 7th. ' His Lordship, who was a passenger on board the Paruvian, writes Wheoj fairly outside Belleisle Island '(lab 51.55 N.,long. 54.51 W.), with icebergs of no great size on either bow, and fairly in the Arctic current, and the Teutonia on our starboard bow, the first officer told me he had seen twice, a large “ thresher ” fish leap clean out of the water not far from our bows. We kept a close watch near about where he had last seen the fish ; nor had we long to wait, and for the next ten minutes to a quarter of an hour we watched a tremendous fight hetweenkthis ifish and a large whale, which, evidently attacked also from below by sword-fish, was ineffectually trying to “sound” and do all in its mighty power to get away, but there was no ‘escape. The thresher, an enormous fish—reckoned by the first officer and head engineer at 30ft. in length—kept continually lashing the whale with its powerful taiVand as if not satisfied that these stunning blows had “ told,” threw itself into the air with enormous laqding.on the whale with the .most resounding' “ whacks.” The sublime and the ludicrous were strangely blended in these attacks ; the passengers and crew were all gathered at the bulwarks, fascinated by the gigantic fight. The whate turned in its agony almost belly uppermost, casting itself abdut .in all directidns, but there was no escape. It never got deep below the surface, which was by ,its mighty efforts into a mass of foam. The combatants went right in the teeth of the wind and the sea then running. We saw the whale in a regular “ flurry ” often, and whenour straining, eyes last saw them they were as hard at it as ever, and it was the opinion of most on board that the whale was fast sickening.