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I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds, might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman's two whales.
Such a catastrophe is of not 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.
There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up in the course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion; an appellation original with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance.
A few years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh the beach. But this custom has now become obsolete; turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea.
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.
"And you think the ship is still there," broke in Harry. "If they really saw such a thing there is every reason to suppose that it is," rejoined the lieutenant. "In the ice anything might be preserved almost indefinitely. Providing the yarn of the whalemen is true, we now come to the most interesting part of the story.
It could not have been more than five hundred yards distant when it came to the surface for the third time, and the harpooneer was distinctly seen to drive a lance deep into its side, from which fountains of blood flowed. He had struck its "life," as whalemen express it, and the whale soon went into its dying struggles, in the course of which it hit the boat, stove in its side, and overturned it.
It was also asserted, as a fact, that the sperm whale, alarmed at the untiring rigor of his assailants, has almost disappeared from the navigable waters, retreating to the fastnesses of the Frozen Ocean, where he is still pursued, although at the greatest peril, by the dauntless New Bedford, Nantucket, and Vineyard whalemen, who, as the narrator proudly stated, have, time and again, come out unscathed from the perils under which Franklin and his crew succumbed.
Captain Kennan said he heard at Anadyrsk and elsewhere of its wonderful strength, and was greatly amused when he arrived at Macrae's and heard the whole story. Many of these natives have learned English from whalemen and speak enough to be understood. Gov. Bilzukavitch visited Anadyrsk in the spring of 1866, and met there a Chukchee chief.
In the Revolution the fisheries suffered severely from the British cruisers, and when, after peace was declared, the whalemen began coming back from the privateers, in which they had sought service, and the wharves of Nantucket, New Bedford, and New London began again to show signs of life, the Americans were confronted by the closing of their English markets.
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