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And after that, the next most distressing sight is the same fat man after he has undressed and is lying there, spouting like a sperm-whale and overflowing his reservation like a crock of salt-rising dough in a warm kitchen, and wondering how he can turn over without bulging the side of the car and maybe causing a wreck.
I give it for what it is worth; premising, however, that from what I know of Bembo, and the foolhardy, dare-devil feats sometimes performed in the sperm-whale fishery, I believe in its substantial truth. As may be believed, Bembo was a wild one after a fish; indeed, all New Zealanders engaged in this business are; it seems to harmonize sweetly with their blood-thirsty propensities.
Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the profound ignorance which till some seventy years back, invested the then fabulous and utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete.
He spoke of the number of traders that frequent the islands, for tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, sandal-wood, beche de mer, etcetera; the whalers that come in pursuit of the cachelot, or sperm-whale; the vessels that resort there for fruit, or supplies of wood and water; the vast number of islands scattered through these seas; from all which he finally concluded, that the chances were largely in our favour.
In that happy land there were plenty of plumes and feathers, and boars’-tusks and sperm-whale teeth, far preferable to all the shining trinkets and gay tappa of the white men; and, best of all, women, far lovelier than the daughters of earth, were there in abundance. “A very pleasant place,” Kory-Kory said it was; “but, after all, not much pleasanter, he thought, than Typee.” “Did he not, then,” I asked him, “wish to accompany the warrior?” “Oh, no; he was very happy where he was; but supposed that some time or other he would go in his own canoe.”
It was not a new discovery, for the sperm-whale or cachalot, had been known for years, but the great numbers of right whales and the ease with which they were taken, had made pursuit of this nobler game uncommon. But now the fact, growing yearly more apparent, that right whales were being driven to more inaccessible haunts, made whalers turn readily to this new prey.
Whale-oil was whale-oil then, and whale-oil and New Bedford were synonymous. Now, a man out in Pennsylvania had bored down into the ground and struck a reservoir. A sort of spouting sperm-whale! But with this important difference: whales spout sea-water, while this gusher spouted whale-oil, or something just as good.
Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of sight of land; cruising after the sperm-whale beneath the scorching sun of the Line, and tossed on the billows of the wide-rolling Pacific the sky above, the sea around, and nothing else! Weeks and weeks ago our fresh provisions were all exhausted. There is not a sweet potato left; not a single yam.
Are not the Straits of Gibralter wide enough to admit a sperm-whale, even though none have sailed through, since Nineveh and the gourd in its suburbs dried up? As for the possible hereafter of the whales; a creature eighty feet long without stockings, and thirty feet round the waist before dinner, is not inconsiderately to be consigned to annihilation.
On the battles of seals, see Capt. C. Abbott in 'Proc. Zool. Soc. 1868, p. 191; Mr. R. Brown, ibid. 1868, p. 436; also L. Lloyd, 'Game Birds of Sweden, 1867, p. 412; also Pennant. On the sperm-whale see Mr. J.H. Thompson, in 'Proc. Zool. All male animals which are furnished with special weapons for fighting, are well known to engage in fierce battles.
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