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Updated: May 24, 2025
There are those this day among them, who, though intelligent and courageous enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right whale, would perhaps either from professional inexperience, or incompetency, or timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there are plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not sailing under the American flag, who have never hostilely encountered the Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monster primitively pursued in the North; seated on their hatches, these men will hearken with a childish fireside interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern whaling.
Two spare boats were fitted for use, and again the whalemen started after their foe. He, for his part, remained on the battle-ground, amid the débris of his hunters' property, and awaited attack. Nay, more; he churned the water with his mighty tail and moved forward to meet his enemy, with ready jaw to grind them to bits.
Such a catastrophe is not of unfrequent occurrence, when whalemen, thus towed by a whale, are tempted to hold on too long; and many instances have happened of boats and their crews being in this way dragged under water and lost. Fortunately the whale dashed horizontally through the water, so that the boat was able to hold on and follow, and in a short time the creature paused and rose for air.
The wind was blowing dead on for the opening in the reef, and the old whaleman came along breasting the swell with her bluff bows, and entered the lagoon. There was no leadsman in her chains. She just came in as if she knew all the soundings by heart as probably she did for these whalemen know every hole and corner in the Pacific.
There were many Yankee ships after seals in those early days, enduring more peril and privation than the whalemen, roving over the South Pacific among the rock-bound islands unknown to the merchant navigator.
To be short, among whalemen, the harpooneers are the holders, so called. Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where, stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well.
"Well, some time ago a member of one of our great scientific bodies, while traveling in Sweden, discovered in a remote village an odd legend concerning some sailors who claimed to have seen an old Viking ship frozen in the ice near the Great Barrier. They were poor and superstitious whalemen and did not dare to disturb it, but they brought home the story."
It is not exaggerated; and the appearance of such a ship and crew might well impress a young man trained in the ways of a ship of the style of the Alert. Long observation has satisfied me that there are no better seamen, so far as handling a ship is concerned, and none so venturous and skilful navigators, as the masters and officers of our whalemen.
Next morning the whaleman was off and away, leaving as a token of her visit the white sand all trampled, an empty bottle, half an old newspaper, and the wigwam torn to pieces. The old sailor cursed her and her crew, for the incident had brought a new exercise into his lazy life. Every day now at noon he had to climb the hill, on the look-out for whalemen.
The waters of the Northern Pacific, even into the Arctic Sea, have of late years been frequented by our whalemen. The application of steam to the general purposes of navigation is becoming daily more common, and makes it desirable to obtain fuel and other necessary supplies at convenient points on the route between Asia and our Pacific shores.
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