Every two minutes there takes place in the crushing darkness of the ocean a fight to the death between two monsters, to an audience of God alone. Prowling through the depths a sperm whale, sixteen metres in length, shoots through the water like a submarine, hunting for its prey. The front of the dark grey whale, whitened by the blows of lashes that have pummeled this seasoned predator signal that this prey will not die ingloriously and without a struggle. The cachalot's front has been struck many times. But never its back.
The battle-haunted leviathan has located its target. A giant squid, smaller than the whale but large enough to dwarf most great white sharks, spots the attacker and squirts a dense black plume of ink. First method of deterrence. The whale, blinded for a moment, swims through the dark cloud and sees the squid trying to swim away but it is not fast enough for the mammal. Strong tail muscles impulse the beast forward and place it at biting distance. Jaws open and the gigantic teeth, like deadly icycles, lust to bite the soft cephalopod.
The squid has to fight. Manouvering with a very sharp turn to the left, it begins its fanatical resistance, lashing the side of the head with a desperate frenzy not unlike an enraged slaver punishing his slave. Curved, razor sharp sickles attached to the suction cups of its tentacles give blow after merciless blow, the nervous system of the whale screaming in pain and the war-torn hull of the animal baring fresh marks of the violence it engages in. It attempts to push through the many-armed behemoth but the squid wraps itself around the whale, holding tight, and begins to bite the hard skin with its beak, tearing at the flesh with more heart than skill.
Bearing through the pain with an ironclad stoicism, the cachalot turns its head toward the tail of the squid and gives a quick bite to the tip that sends panic to the cephalopod, which lets go and flails its tentacles frenetically. One final turn and the whale catches several of them in its mouth, cuts them off and the dismembered limbs fall to the antipode of the heavens to be forgotten forever. The squid knows it cannot triumph anymore, but it gives out one last charge of suicidal heroism and attacks the right eye of the whale, blinding it with the rapid bites of the beak. In a tortured agony the leviathan squeezes out the last of its effort and catches the squid in the middle of its body, chomping down on the softness with the full force of its jaws, like enormous shears, which slice the squid completely in twain.
The giant plate-like eyes on the falling carcass remain frozen. Uncowardly eyes. Uncrying eyes that stared down their assassin and bare witness to a virile spirit that was not extinguished. The meat that remains in the jaws of the leviathan is cut into smaller pieces and swallowed whole, the triumphant whale tired and eager to feast. Wounded but victorious, the cachalot exits the battleground and disappears into the black ether of a mysterious world, too ancient and mythical for man to have the privilege to witness.