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This whale, among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale and the Physeter whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words.
With all his supple smartness, he had none of the dogged savagery of the cachalot about him, nor did we feel any occasion to beware of his rushes, rather courting them, so as to finish the game as quickly as possible.
For my part, I firmly believe that the cachalot is so terrible a foe, that the great sharks who hover round a gravid cow of the BALAENAE, driving her in terror to some shallow spot where she may hope to protect her young, never dare to approach a sperm cow on kidnapping errands, or any other if they can help it, until their unerring guides inform them that life is extinct.
Bullen's personal narrative, "The Cruise of the Cachalot." It was at the end of the eighteenth century that spermaceti became so abundant in the market that candles of it were manufactured and sold cheaper than those of wax.
We left the crew of the Catamaran in full occupation, "smoking" shark-flesh on the back of a cachalot whale. To make sure of a sufficient stock, enough to last them with light rations for a voyage, if need be, to the other side of the Atlantic, they had continued at the work all day long, and several hours into the night.
Such a diet develops his fighting qualities, and while the right whale usually takes the steel sullenly, and dies like an overgrown seal, the cachalot fights fiercely, now diving with such a rush that he has been known to break his jaw by the fury with which he strikes the bottom at the depth of 200 fathoms; now raising his enormous bulk in air, to fall with an all-obliterating crash upon the boat which holds his tormentors, or sending boat and men flying into the air with a furious blow of his gristly flukes, or turning on his back and crunching his assailants between his cavernous jaws.
Such malformations of the lower mandible of the cachalot have often been met with, and variously explained; but the most plausible opinion seems to be that they have been acquired when the animal is very young and its bones not yet indurated, since it is impossible to believe that an adult could suffer such an accident without the broken jaw drooping instead of being turned on one side.
Ben threw a rope around one of the pectoral fins; and, after making it fast, the Catamaran lay moored alongside the cachalot, like some diminutive tender attached to a huge ship of war! There were several reasons why Ben Brace should mount up to the summit of that mountain of whalebone and blubber; and, as soon as the raft had been safely secured, he essayed the ascent.
The cachalot is a disagreeable creature, more tadpole than fish, according to Fredol's description. But the formidable troop was nearing us. They had seen the whales and were preparing to attack them.
They could by no means agree as to what this mysterious substance was, how it was produced, or under what conditions. They knew that it was sometimes found floating near the dead body of a sperm whale the mate, in fact, stated that he had taken it once from the rectum of a cachalot and they were certain that it was of great value from one to three guineas per ounce.
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