A whirlpool was formed where the animal had disappeared.

A wave dashed up on to the deck as if the aeronef were a ship driving against wind and tide.
Luckily, with a blow of the hatchet the mate severed the line, and the "Albatross," freed from her tug, sprang aloft six hundred feet under the impulse of her ascensional screws.

Robur had maneuvered his ship without losing his coolness for a moment.
A few minutes afterwards the whale returned to the surface--dead.
From every side the birds flew down on to the carcass, and their cries were enough to deafen a congress.

The "Albatross," without stopping to share in the spoil, resumed her course to the west.
In the morning of the 17th of June, at about six o'clock, land was sighted on the horizon.

This was the peninsula of Alaska, and the long range of breakers of the Aleutian Islands.
The "Albatross" glided over the barrier where the fur seals swarm for the benefit of the Russo-American Company.