They say the whale is over two hundred meters long, and that he sings a song more beautiful than any minstrel’s as he cruises the oceans of Earth. Stories of the Great Blue are uplifting stories — of islands saved from destruction during hurricanes, of children saved from drowning while at play, of fish herded to desolate shores during times of starvation. All the islands have stories that tell of the Great Blue, and students of later years have remarked often on the one common factor: that the Whale seemed to have the power of sensing human distress from afar. Where he came from nobody ever knew; but he came, and he helped people in need, and he went away. * Kelina was back. In his mysterious way — so the minstrels say — the Great Blue had found Kelina, where the emissaries of King Awamia had failed, and had delivered her to the island of Malaloa. Now, the Great Blue was good and acted only in the interests of man, and could not have known that Malaloa had recently declared war on King Awamia’s island of Uami.
