The Mystery of Whale Breathing

Robinson: This chapter on the fountain makes me want to investigate the blowhole and whale respiration as a subject in itself. But this chapter also raises a number of controversies and strange claims that I wanted to further investigate. The allegedly deadly poisonous blinding spout steals your power of sight, melts away your flesh like xenomorph blood. Another thing I have heard it said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is fairly spouted into your eyes, it will blind you. And I know one who, coming into still closer contact with the spout, whether with some scientific object in view or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled off from his cheek and arm