Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 9, 2025
Except for the head work, removing the blubber was effected in precisely the same way as in the case of the cachalot. There was a marked difference between the quantity of lard enveloping this whale and those we had hitherto dealt with. It was nearly double the thickness, besides being much richer in oil, which fairly dripped from it as we hoisted in the blanket-pieces.
As we passed under her stern, I read the name CACHALOT, of New Bedford; but as soon as we ranged alongside, I realized that I was booked for the sailor's horror a cruise in a whaler. Badly as I wanted to get to sea, I had not bargained for this, and would have run some risks to get ashore again; but they took no chances, so we were all soon aboard.
We have not the slightest knowledge of the subsequent movements of the shoal, although the whole south-west coast was now alert for it. But it may, perhaps, be significant that a cachalot was stranded off Sark on June 3. Two weeks and three days after this Sidmouth affair, a living Haploteuthis came ashore on Calais sands.
"Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche! White Whale no." "Very good, then; good bye now, and I'll call again in a minute." Then rapidly pulling back towards the Pequod, and seeing Ahab leaning over the quarter-deck rail awaiting his report, he moulded his two hands into a trumpet and shouted "No, Sir! No!" Upon which Ahab retired, and Stubb returned to the Frenchman.
Its shining surface was absolutely without a speck. With a disappointed air, the captain of the Catamaran descended from his post of observation; and once more turned his attention to the dead cachalot from which they were now separated by less than a hundred fathoms, a distance that was constantly decreasing, as the raft, under sail, continued to drift nearer.
For instance, in the CACHALOT we carried a crew of thirty-seven all told, of which twenty-four were men before the mast, or common seamen, our tonnage being under 400 tons. Many a splendid clipper-ship carrying an enormous spread of canvas on four masts, and not overloaded with 2500 tons of cargo on board, carries twenty-eight or thirty all told, or even less than that.
The harpoons which they had handled with such deadly effect upon the carcass of the cachalot had been there left, sticking up out of the back of the dead leviathan composing that improvised spit erected for roasting the shark-steaks. In short, every article of iron, even to their own knives, which had been thrown loosely into the boat, was now at the bottom of the sea.
The tarry strands caught like tinder; and soon after a fierce bright blaze was seen rising several feet above the back of the cachalot, causing the shark-steaks to frizzle and fry, and promising in a very short space of time to "do them to a turn." Any one who could have witnessed the spectacle from distance, and not understanding its nature, might have fancied that the whale was on fire!
In this optimistic mood, then, I gaily flung myself into my place in the mate's boat one morning, as we were departing in chase of a magnificent cachalot that had been raised just after breakfast. There were no other vessels in sight much to our satisfaction the wind was light, with a cloudless sky, and the whale was dead to leeward of us.
Everything was rubbed and scrubbed and scoured until no speck or soil could be found; indeed, no gentleman's yacht or man-of-war is kept more spotlessly clean than was the CACHALOT.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking