Part 5

One night the manatees lay down on the clean sand, folded their flippers under them, and closed their eyes. They fell fast asleep. Now one and now another woke to swim to the top for a good long breath. About mid-night the old mother suddenly felt a chill stealing through the water. She shivered all over, and hurried to wake the others. She knew that cold weather had come. If they did not take care they would all catch cold and die.

So away they started, as fast as they could paddle, down the river to the sea. Then south along the shore they travelled to find warmer waters. They kept so near land that they could hear the waves breaking on the beach. The ocean washed to and fro in swinging billows over their heads. When the baby lifted his head above the surface, bits of foam blew in his eyes from the curling crests of the waves.

Down below, where the old ones stopped to munch the seaweeds, he saw wonderful things. There were starfish crawling along with their five rays spread out. There were transparent jellyfishes, with long threads streaming down from their quivering bodies. There were mussels in their hinged shells lying on the bottom. There were sponges growing on the rocks. There were trees of branching coral, each tiny coral animal waving the fringe around its open mouth.

Of course there were fishes—hundreds and hundreds of them—flashing everywhere. Once a fat porpoise came rolling and tumbling through the shallow water. He was a mammal, and belonged to the same group as the whales. When he was a baby he fed on milk, just in the same way as the little manatee and all other mammals.

On and on travelled the manatees toward the warm south seas, now swimming on swiftly, now stopping to munch the weeds. Sometimes they stood on the tips of their tails and nodded their heads as if bowing. Sometimes they folded their flippers under them to sleep, then woke to breathe, and fall asleep again.

After days and days they reached the southern river, where they were to spend the winter. There they found another family of manatees with a little one just the size of the baby. While the old ones munched the weeds, or dozed on the mud islands, the two youngest slid down the slippery banks and splashed and dived together. They took naps side by side. Sometimes they tried to balance themselves on their tails, as the old ones did.

This southern river was different from that one at home. The plants had broader leaves and larger flowers. The swamp was tangled and shadowy even at noonday. Strange animals tramped through the underbrush; monkeys swung on the branches, and brightly-colored birds flew overhead. Hairy spiders crawled over the ground, and big snakes wriggled into the water.

When spring came, away the manatees swam on their way back to the pleasant river, where the baby first opened his little eyes in the cool green nursery among the lily-leaves. Of course he never knew that some sailors once saw his mother rocking him to sleep at the top of the water. They thought that she was a mermaid with a baby in her arms.

III

THE WHALE

“THE BIGGEST ONE”

THE BIGGEST ONE

HE was the very biggest baby in all the world. He looked like a monstrous fish as he lay beside his mother in the middle of the bay. But he was not a fish. He breathed with lungs instead of gills. On his thick skin he had a few bristly hairs instead of scales such as fishes have. The blood rushing through the great veins in his body was warm instead of cold. And finally he was drinking milk in mighty gulps that sent gallons and gallons down his baby throat at every swallow. He was a whale, and belonged to the class of mammals.

The big body of the mother whale looked like a dark rounded island as she lay on her side almost out of water. She was the largest mother animal that ever lived. When she opened her enormous jaws her mouth seemed like a gloomy cave. Fastened along its floor was an immense cushiony white tongue as big as a feather-bed.

The baby whale himself was twice as long as an ox. His smooth skin glistened like shiny leather when he heaved his back above the waves for an instant. Once in a while he flapped his forked tail or wriggled his front fins. Though his eyes were bigger than a cow’s they looked very small while he lay, half asleep, rocking lazily to and fro in the swell of the sea.

The baby whale knew how to swim alone from the very first day. The earliest thing he remembered was the water lapping over his eyes and tickling in the tiny holes of his ears. On top of his head there were two blow-holes, or nostrils, closed with valves, to keep the water from trickling into his lungs.

When he rose to the top of the sea, to fill his lungs with air, away he swam, up and up, easily and lightly, through the pale-green water, toward the sunlight twinkling on the surface above. The mother whale swam beside him, almost touching him with her flippers. Her flippers were really her arms. When he was tired she helped him by holding him up.

As soon as his head pushed above the waves he opened the valves in the blow-holes and drew great breaths of sweet, fresh air deep down into his lungs. How good it felt! Then arching his back, with a flourish of his tail down he dived after his mother. They sank swiftly into the cool depths, while the sea closed silently over their shining sides.

The baby whale did not go down very far. The air in his lungs buoyed him up. His bones were light and full of oil. Under his dark skin a layer of fat, called blubber, kept him floating, almost as if he were wearing a life-preserver wrapped around him.

The new air in his lungs grew warm and damp. After a few minutes he wanted to breathe again. So with a flap-flap-flap of his tail up he paddled. Puff, piff! out through the blow-holes rushed the warm air from his lungs. In the cold outside air it changed to spray, and went spouting up like a fountain. Down it came showering, with silver drops splashing and tinkling.

That must have been fun. The baby could not stay under water so long as his mother could. Often he left her swimming around over the rocky bottom of the bay while he paddled up to get a fresh breath. Sometimes he was in such a hurry that he blew out before reaching the top. Then the water above him went spouting up, and sprinkling back noisily about his glistening head.

For days and days the baby whale lived there in the bay with his mother. It was the whole world to him, for he had seen no other place. Of course he did not know how it looked from above, with its blue, sparkling water, and its tall cliffs casting long shadows over the ripples at dawn.

To him the bay was a delightful playground. Its oozy floor was covered with rocks under the cool green water. Long fringes of seaweed floated deep down under there. In dark caves sponges and sea-lilies grew, and crabs scuttled backward into slimy crannies. There were big fishes and little fishes darting to and fro. At times they hung motionless, with glistening scales, their round eyes unwinking, their tails quivering now and then.

Every day, after the baby whale drank all the milk he wanted, he took a nap, lying beside his mother on the surface of the bay. Every day he grew a little bigger, and swam a little faster, and stayed below a little longer without rising to breathe.

When he was old enough to stop drinking milk he learned to eat the food which his mother liked. He often watched her swimming around the bay, with her great mouth hanging open. There were millions of the tiniest kind of creatures living in the water. They flowed into her mouth at the same time with the water. When she felt them tickling and wiggling over her tongue she closed her jaw almost shut. A sieve of long elastic strips of bone fell like a curtain from the roof of her mouth. Then the water drained out between the strips of bone, leaving the tiny animals inside to be swallowed.

Instead of teeth the baby whale found such a fringe of whalebone strips growing on the roof of his mouth. When it was long enough to use he began to swim around with his jaw hanging down. Every day, in this way, he caught and ate thousands of tiny shrimps and crabs and mussels. He could not swallow any large fish because his throat was only a few inches wide.

He did not know that there are different whales in a different part of the sea. These other whales have teeth instead of whalebone sieves. In the tops of their heads they have great holes filled with sperm oil. Their throats are wide enough to swallow a man. They are called sperm whales, but the whales with whalebone strips in their mouths are called true whales.

When the baby stopped drinking milk the mother set out with him to leave the bay, and find the father whale in the deep sea without. The young whale could swim almost as fast as the old one now. He could stay under water without breathing quite as long as she could. The warm blanket of blubber under his skin had grown thicker. It kept him warm and helped him to float.