"Whales on the port bow!"
The cry rang from stem to stern of the whaler Orion. Off in the distance columns of vapor were shooting fifteen feet into the air. Then three great black bodies rounded into view. They were humpback whales leaping and diving as smoothly as waterbirds!
The Captain signaled for full speed ahead. The Orion twisted and writhed about like a wild thing as she climbed a huge wave and then plunged headlong down its smooth, green slope. Behind the Captain stood Roy Chapman Andrews with his notebook and camera, recording every detail of his first whale hunt.
In the years that followed, Dr. Andrews went on many whale hunts and recorded the strange habits of every kind of whale. Now he gives the highlights of those experiences in All About Whales, a distinguished scientist's first-hand report of his own scientific expeditions to study the whales of the world.
Vividly he tells of the harpooned finback whale that pulled his ship through the water at ten miles an hour and the fifty-ton whale that rammed the little whaling vessel and nearly rolled it over. And as he recounts these and other exciting adventures, he gives the scientific facts about whales, those extraordinarily creatures whose ancestors were land mammals that went to sea long generations ago.
—from the book
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