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It is found floating in the ocean, and is recognised as coming from the cachalot owing to its being largely made up of the horny beaks of cuttle-fish, upon which the cachalot feeds. It is still used in perfumery, and fetches the extraordinary price of four guineas the ounce. A piece weighing 4-1/2 oz. may be seen in Cromwell Road.
The same number, however, did not go back as they had come; for one of them, impaled by the harpoon of Ben Brace, was dragged out of his native element, and hauled up the well-greased incline towards the highest point on the carcass of the cachalot.
A process of reasoning that passed through the mind of the old whalesman, founded upon his former professional experiences, conducted him to it. If it be the whale-ship, reasoned he, she must have come back in search of the cachalot. Her crew must have known that they had killed it.
The great cachalot or sperm whale is captured, chiefly in the Southern Ocean, and killed in large numbers for the sake of the "spermaceti," or "sperm oil," which forms the great mass of its head, but he is so fierce and active that he is not easily captured, and is not in immediate danger of extinction. But the whalebone whales are in a parlous state.
Soc. 1869, p. 553. See Prof. Turner, in 'Journal of Anat. and Phys. 1872, p. 76, on the homological nature of these tusks. Also Mr. In the female both are always rudimentary. The male cachalot has a larger head than that of the female, and it no doubt aids him in his aquatic battles.
Descriptions of the dying flurry of the sperm-whale are plentiful in whaling literature, many of the best of them being in that ideal whaleman's log "The Cruise of the Cachalot," by Frank T. Bullen. I quote one of these: "Suddenly the mate gave a howl: 'Starn all starn all!
The floating fog, absorbed by his fervid rays, had almost disappeared from the deep, or at all events had become so dissipated that the different objects composing that strange tableau in the proximity of the dead cachalot could all be seen by a single coup d'oeil; and were also in sight of one another.
At this crisis their thoughts reverted to the cachalot, not the live, leaping leviathan, whose hostile behaviour had so suddenly blighted their bright prospects; but the dead one, upon whose huge carcass they had so lately stood. There they might still find food, more shark-meat. If not, there was the whale-beef, or blubber: coarse viands, it is true, but such as may sustain life.
Since that hurried retreat from their moorings by the carcass of the cachalot they had not eaten anything like a regular meal. The series of terrible incidents, so rapidly succeeding one another, along with the almost continuous exertions they had been compelled to make, had kept their minds from dwelling upon the condition of their appetites.
But in the year 1690 the brave and hardy fishermen of the north-east coasts of North America established that systematic pursuit of the cachalot which has thriven so wonderfully ever since, although it must be confessed that the last few years have witnessed a serious decline in this great branch of trade.
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