To eat, the whale takes a wide-open gulp of water and closes its jaws to a slit so that as it pushes its tongue forwards and upwards, water is forced through the baleen while the copepods, krill and other animals it likes to eat remain in its mouth.

As Betts had sung it, the song was brassy, vaudevillelike:

the silent accrescence of belief from the unwatched depositions of a general, never-contradicted hearsay!

Sometimes the memory of her peaceful life at Florence obtruded itself upon her, and more than that, her charitable occupations when she attended the sick in that city, and whence, as from a rough-hewn chalice containing nectarian drink, she had quaffed happiness.