We are certain that the game is not distant." "Is it possible that such little beasts can feed such large ones ?" cried Jack.
"Ah! my boy," replied Captain Hull, "little grains of vermicelli, of flour, of fecula powder, do they not make very good porridge?
Yes; and nature has willed that it should be so.

When a whale floats in the midst of these red waters, its soup is served; it has only to open its immense mouth.

Myriads of crustaceans enter it.

The numerous plates of those whalebones with which the animal's palate is furnished serve to strain like fishermen's nets; nothing can get out of them again, and the mass of crustaceans is ingulfed in the whale's vast stomach, as the soup of your dinner in yours." "You think right, Jack," observed Dick Sand, "that Madam Whale does not lose time in picking these crustaceans one by one, as you pick shrimps." "I may add," said Captain Hull, "that it is just when the enormous gourmand is occupied in this way, that it is easiest to approach it without exciting its suspicion.

That is the favorable moment to harpoon it with some success." At that instant, and as if to corroborate Captain Hull, a sailor's voice was heard from the front of the ship: "A whale to larboard!" Captain Hull strode up.
"A whale!" cried he.
And his fisherman's instinct urging him, he hastened to the "Pilgrim's" forecastle.
Mrs.Weldon, Jack, Dick Sand, Cousin Benedict himself, followed him at once.
In fact, four miles to windward a certain bubbling indicated that a huge marine mammifer was moving in the midst of the red waters.