It was like draining a dish
of string beans through a colander. Having swallowed the mess of
jellyfish and squid, she would open her mouth again, and wait for
another lot to come in. It was a very easy and comfortable way to get
a bite of breakfast, while waiting for her baby to finish nursing. And
every little while, from the big blowhole or nostril on top of her head
she would 'spout,' or send up a spray-like jet of steamy breath. And
every little while, too, the big-headed baby under her flipper would
send up a baby spout, as if in imitation of his mother.
"You must not think, however, that this lazy way of feeding was enough
to keep the vast frame of the mother whale (she was quite sixty feet
long: three times as long as Bill's shanty yonder) supplied with food.
This was just nibbling. When she felt that her baby had nursed enough,
she gave it a signal which it understood. It fell a little back along
her huge side. Then, lifting her enormous tail straight in the air,
she dived slowly downward into the pale, greenish glimmer of the deeper
tide, the calf keeping his place cleverly behind her protecting flipper.
"Down here the minute life of the ocean waters swarmed more densely
than at the surface.
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