A FIGHT WITH A WHALE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2122, 11 December 1880, Page 3

A FIGHT WITH A WHALE.

Lord Archibald Campbell sends the 'Sootsman ' the following account of a battle, which a hewas a witneßs,betweenathreßher,BWord.fish, and a whale off Belleisle, at 5 p.m. on j September 7th. His Lordship, who _ was a passenger on board the Peruvian, writes : When fairly outside Belleisle Island (lat. 51.55 N., Long. 54,51 W.), with icebergs of no great size on either bow, and fairly in the Arctio current, and the Teutonia on our starboard bow, the first officer told me , ho had seen twice a large " thresher" » fish leap clean out of the water not far from our bows. We kept a oloae watoh 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 moßt tremenduous fight between this fish and a large whale, which evidently attacked also from below by sword-fish, was ineffectually trying to ' sound' and do all in 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 30£t in length—kept continually lashing the whale with its powerful tail, and as if not satisfied that these stunning blows had 'told,' threw itself in the air with enormous leaps, landing on the whale with the most resounding ' whaoks.' The sublime and the ludicrous wsre strangely blended in these attacks; the passengers and crew were all gathered at the bulwarks, fatidnatcd by the gigantic fight. The whale turned in its agony almost belly uppermost, casting itself about in all directions, but there was no escape. It never got deep below the surface, whioh was churned by its mighty efforts into a seething 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 when our straining eyes last saw them they were as hard at it as ever, and it was the opinion of moat on board that the whale was fast sickening."