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Updated: May 9, 2025
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.
Better satisfied with their prospects than they had been for some time past, they soon fell asleep; and silence reigned around the dark floating mass that included the forms of cachalot and Catamaran.
But this much let me say: that Right whaling on the Nor'-West Coast, in chill and dismal fogs, the sullen inert monsters rafting the sea all round like Hartz forest logs on the Rhine, and submitting to the harpoon like half-stunned bullocks to the knife; this horrid and indecent Right whaling, I say, compared to a spirited hunt for the gentlemanly Cachalot in southern and more genial seas, is as the butchery of white bears upon blank Greenland icebergs to zebra hunting in Caffraria, where the lively quarry bounds before you through leafy glades.
It chanced that a cachalot was killed off Terceira by some sperm whalers, and in its last struggles charged almost to the Prince's yacht, missed it, rolled under, and died within twenty yards of his rudder. And in its agony it threw up a number of large objects, which the Prince, dimly perceiving they were strange and important, was, by a happy expedient, able to secure before they sank.
M. Cachalot had not read either Grampus or Merman, but he heard of their dispute in time to insert a paragraph upon it in his brilliant work, L'orient au point de vue actuel, in which he was dispassionate enough to speak of Grampus as possessing a coup d'oeil presque français in matters of historical interpretation, and of Merman as nevertheless an objector qui mérite d'être connu.
The great cachalot was now directly ahead, about two hundred fathoms away, and coming down upon them with twice his ordinary speed. The surf flew in all directions about him. "His course was marked by a white foam a rod in width which he made with the continual thrashing of this tail."
As Ben terminated his speech, he strode across the deck of the raft, and commenced clambering up on the carcass. Snowball, who perceived the wisdom of his old comrade's design, let go the flake of fish he had been holding in the blaze; and, parting from the pot, once more followed the sailor up the steep side of the cachalot.
Of course, there are whales whose habits lead them at certain seasons, for breeding purposes, to frequent various groups of islands, but the cachalot seems to be quite impartial in his preferences; if he "uses" around certain waters, he is just as likely to be found there in July as January. The Bonins, too, form an ideal calling-place, from the whaling captain's point of view.
When a sperm whale is in health, nothing that inhabits the sea has any chance with him; neither does he scruple to carry the war into the enemy's country, since all is fish that comes to his net, and a shark fifteen feet in length has been found in the stomach of a cachalot. The only exception he seems to make is in the case of man.
As the sailor ceased speaking he once more directed his glance over the ocean; which, after another minute and careful scrutiny of the horizon, fell back upon the body of the whale, with the same expression of disappointment that before had been observable. During all that day, the sailor and the ex-cook of the Pandora kept watch from the summit of the dead cachalot.
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