Free 05 Whale Adventure by Willard Price

forehead of a sperm-whale is straight up and down and some ten feet high. Now these two black cliffs met in a crash that sent a shiver through both great bodies and must have resulted in two whale-sized headaches.
    The mother whale lay trembling, sheltering her babies under her flippers, one on each side. The big bull, infuriated by his failure to smash the boat and maddened by the pain of the harpoon in his neck, thrashed the water into white foam. The two who might have been uncles, for they both seemed to be males, swam round and round, blowing furiously and keeping the other two boats from entering the circle. Mr Scott, standing up in one boat, was getting a picture of the whole great show.
    The big bull submerged and the water was suddenly quiet. Hal could see the long black body like a submarine passing just below the boat. He saw the tail whipping upward.
    Then the world flew apart. The boat rose into the sky as if being hauled up by unseen cables. It turned upside down. Hal and his companions were flung out into space and whirled round and round together with oars and tubs and spars and gear of every sort.
    Then he struck the water and went deep into it. Clawing his way upward he collided with the underside of a whale. Hal’s breath had already been knocked out of him and if he could not get to the surface very soon he would drown.
    Which way should he go? He should try to come out on the flank, but he could not tell how the whale lay. If by mistake he went towards the rear a whip of the tail might knock him senseless. If he went forward it would be an even greater mistake.
    m
    He swam, his back brushing against the whale’s hide. He kept groping for a flipper. If he found one he would know that he was on the whale’s flank and could come up to breathe.
    Presently his hand grasped something that might be a flipper. He was about to pull himself up when he realized that this was no flipper - it was the edge of the whale’s lower jaw. He was practically inviting himself to dinner. One snap of that great mouth and Hal Hunt would go to join his ancestors.
    He backed off at once and came up at the whale’s right side behind the fin. He had never thought to see the boat again, but there it was right-side up. It had landed luckily and had very little water in it. Oars and gear floated all about. Hal, after a deep breath or two to replenish his starved lungs, joined with the other men in collecting the floating articles, chucking them back into the boat and climbing in after them. Third mate Brown counted heads. Not a man was missing.
    ‘All right, boys,’ said Brown, raising his voice to be heard above the spouts and splashes of the whales. ‘You’re lucky to be alive. Oars! Let’s get out of here.’
    ‘Easier said than done!’ growled Bruiser.
    The boat rammed head-on into a whale.
    ‘Try backing up,’ commanded the third mate.
    A few strokes backward and the way was blocked by an uncle.
    The boat was trapped in whales. It lay in a bit of water no bigger than’ a swimming-pool, with whales all round it. They closed in upon it. The big bull, smarting from his wound, began to rush off across the sea, and all the others with him. The whole pod moved like one animal, and snugly packed in the centre was the whaleboat, in peril of being crushed at any moment between the great flanks.
    And yet even at such a time a whaleman thinks of barrels of oil. Brown seized the lance and went forward. The boat was snugged up tightly to the side of the big bull. It was a perfect set-up for a killing. A perfect chance for Brown to kill the whale, an equally perfect chance that the whale and his pals would kill every man aboard.
    Brown stood in the bow with lance raised. He was enveloped in spray thrown up by the speeding boat, and thrown down by the spouting whales. He looked like a statue in a fountain.
    The lance went home. Deep, deep it went, and the whale in one convulsive movement it struck the water with its head and tail,