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Marvellous the intuition or the happy flukes of women! Yet their duplicity was still more marvellous. The creature's expressed anxiety about the danger of Lady Massulam's society to Charlie must have been pure, wanton, gratuitous pretence. He told her of his meeting with Lady Massulam. "I left her at 2 a.m.," said he, with well-feigned levity. "I knew she wouldn't leave you alone for long.
The next instant down it came, dashed into fragments, while those in it were sent flying in all directions. The first mate, in his desire to go to the rescue of his shipmates, was on the point of heaving his own line overboard with a drogue fastened to it, when the whale he had struck, lifting up its huge flukes, sounded, nearly dragging him overboard as he let out the line.
Keeping a short rope to the anchor, so that it barely touched the bottom, we dragged it slowly along until it stuck and the boat fetched up hard and fast. "We've got it," Charley cried. "Come on and lend a hand to get it in." Together we hove up the rope till the anchor came in sight with the sturgeon line caught across one of the flukes.
Second: It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale only fights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in his conflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail. In striking at a boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the blow is only inflicted by the recoil.
The line was quickly run out, and before long the creature again came to the surface and attempted to swim away from its foes; but it had not gone far, before it began furiously to lash the water with its flukes, beating it into a mass of foam and blood. The boats kept clear, their crews well knowing that one blow of that mighty tail would dash their boats to splinters.
No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday, with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say, after the second iron, to toss it overboard down comes the tail like a Lima tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and, flukes first, the white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was all chips. We all struck out.
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.
"Where does the sperm whale come in?" asked Colin. "It's got teeth, like the gray whale," was the reply, "but you never find it in cold water. Sperm whalin' is comin' into favor again. But those two over there the ones we're after, are finbacks. You can tell by the spout, by the fin, by not seein' the flukes of the tail, an' by the way they play around, slappin' each other in fun."
"All hands ahoy!" shouted the mate in a tempestuous voice, while the men rushed to their respective stations. "Boat-steerers, get your boats ready." "Ay, ay, sir!" "There go flukes!" cried the look-out as the whale dived and tossed its flukes, that is its tail, in the air, not more than a mile on the lee-bow; "she's heading right for the ship." "Down with the helm!" roared the captain.
In stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay on board, and keep the ship. Helm there! Luff, luff a point! So; steady, man, steady! There go flukes! No, no; only black water! All ready the boats there? Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck; lower, lower, quick, quicker!" and he slid through the air to the deck.
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