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Updated: May 19, 2025
Cachalots spouted; dolphins danced, as though still to those wild flutes of Dionysus; porpoises rolled beneath the surface of the transparent waves, diving below the vessel's sides but just in time to save their shiny noses; and all day long, ignoring the chart upon the stairway walls, the tourists turned their glasses eastwards, searching for a first sight of Greece.
There was a little obliquity about the direction of the spout that made me hopeful, for the cachalot alone sends his spout diagonally upward, all the others spout vertically. It was but a school of kogia, or "short-headed" cachalots; but as we secured five of them, averaging seven barrels each, with scarcely any trouble, I felt quite pleased with myself.
I believe in the existence of a mammal power fully organised, belonging to the branch of vertebrata, like the whales, the cachalots, or the dolphins, and furnished with a horn of defence of great penetrating power." "Hum!" said the harpooner, shaking his head with the air of a man who would not be convinced. "Notice one thing, my worthy Canadian," I resumed.
I have even been told that those of Hullamoch and Umgallick, of the Aleutian Islands, are sometimes a hundred and fifty feet long." "That seems to me exaggeration. These creatures are only balaeaopterons, provided with dorsal fins; and, like the cachalots, are generally much smaller than the Greenland whale."
It was the thought of this that came into the mind of the ex-whalesman; and rendered him apprehensive, as he saw the school of cachalots coming on towards the spot occupied by the frail embarkation.
What a noise on the surface of the waves! What sharp hissing, and what snorting peculiar to these enraged animals! In the midst of these waters, generally so peaceful, their tails made perfect billows. For one hour this wholesale massacre continued, from which the cachalots could not escape. Several times ten or twelve united tried to crush the Nautilus by their weight.
Conseil, Ned Land, and I took our places before the window in the saloon, and Captain Nemo joined the pilot in his cage to work his apparatus as an engine of destruction. Soon I felt the beatings of the screw quicken, and our speed increased. The battle between the cachalots and the whales had already begun when the Nautilus arrived.
Just as the ci-devant whalesman had finished making this observation, the cachalots came past, causing the sea to undulate for miles around the spot, as if a tempest had swept over, and was succeeded by its swell. One after another passed with a graceful gliding, that might have won the admiration of an observer viewing it from a position of safety.
We, of course, had no need to visit any port for some time to come, having made such good use of our opportunities at the Cocos. We found whales scarce and small, so, although we cruised in this vicinity for nearly two months, six small cow cachalots were all we were able to add to our stock, representing less then two hundred barrels of oil. This was hardly good enough for Captain Slocum.
We had hardly got well clear of the heads before we saw a school of cachalots away on the horizon, some twelve miles off the land to the southward. We made all possible sail in chase, but found, to our dismay, that they were "making a passage," going at such a rate that unless the wind freshened we could hardly hope to come up with them.
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