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I accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea; I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often worked harder than the common sailors during the day and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage.
The reader will willingly spare me any particular description of this troublesome voyage: I must only mention that, on the 14th of February, in latitude 35° and 155° longitude, we sailed over a point where, according to the assertion of some whale-fishers in Wahu, an island lies; but though the horizon was perfectly clear, we could discover no sign of land.
In fact, these islands have long been a nursery for whale-fishers, because the cachalot loves their steep-to shores, and the hardy natives, whenever and wherever they can muster a boat and a little gear, are always ready to sally forth and attack the unwary whale that ventures within their ken.
Dave ceased poling, and all watched the surface for the return of the bladder, as whale-fishers wait for the rising of the great mammal that has thrown his flukes upward and dived down toward the bottom of the sea; but they watched in vain. A minute, two minutes, five minutes, then quite a quarter of an hour, but no sign of the submerged buoy. "Yow two look over the sides," said Dave.
The captain offered to keep them for us, but we said 'No, no, for we had had quite enough of them. "So we went after whales, and made a 'good catch, as the whale-fishers call a good shipload of oil, and then we bore away for Aberdeen, only stopping on the way at two or three half-savage places.
Among the Greenlanders there is a caste of whale-fishers, separate and apart, and this story, in its second stage, was applied to teach, Ne sutor ultra crepidam, that all should stick to their trades, and that though a sorcerer might rule the winds it did not follow that he could win the whales.
Imagine a thick soft lump absolutely crammed with fat, and completely immovable, because it is glued down along its whole length to the bottom of the mouth, and you will have a good idea of this strange tongue, which in the whale, the largest of the cetaceans, attains to the length of twenty-five feet and the width of twelve, and of itself alone furnishes the whale-fishers with from five to six tons of oil.
But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float.
"This breathing of the largest whales can be seen several miles; that is, I should say, the spray thrown up by their breath. So you see the common expression of the whale-fishers, 'There she blows! is a very good one; for sometimes, when the whale is very large, the spray looks like a small waterspout in the sea.
But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float.
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