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The circumstance of its being an arm of the sea was rendered very evident by several huge whales spouting in different directions. One day, off the East coast of Tierra del Fuego, we saw a grand sight in several spermaceti whales jumping upright quite out of the water, with the exception of their tail-fins. We sailed on till it was dark, and then pitched our tents in a quiet creek.
The Sword-fish pierces it with his pointed "beak"; the other slashes the sides of the wretched Whale with its long tail. It is said, by those who have seen such a fight, that the Thresher's tail cuts deep into the Whale's sides. In all parts of the wide sea there are Whales of one kind or another. We have looked briefly at the Sperm and Greenland Whales, and the Killer Whale.
For if, when Shackleton passed the Bay of Whales on January, 24, 1908, and saw the ice of the bay in process of breaking up and drifting out, he had waited a few hours, or at the most a couple of days, the problem of the South Pole would probably have been solved long before December, 1911.
Now and then, too, some huge detached groups of rocks would be visible towering above the waves. 29th October. Saw no land. A few whales betrayed their presence by the showers of spray they spouted up, and immense swarms of flying fish were startled by the noise of our engines. On the morning of the 30th of October we came in sight of the Indian continent.
"Robert was just going to tell me something about his adventures with the whales." "That's capital!" cried the old gentleman, rubbing his hands. "Come, Bob, my boy, let's hear about 'em." Being thus invited, I consented to spin them a yarn. The old gentleman settled himself in his chair, my mother smoothed her apron, folded her hands, and looked meekly into my face.
Some of the cases of rudimentary organs are extremely curious; for instance, the presence of teeth in foetal whales, which when grown up have not a tooth in their heads; and the presence of teeth, which never cut through the gums, in the upper jaws of our unborn calves. It has even been stated on good authority that rudiments of teeth can be detected in the beaks of certain embryonic birds.
So that when at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the towing whale sideways vanished; then, with the tapering force of his parting momentum, we glided between two whales into the innermost heart of the shoal, as if from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake. Here the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales, were heard but not felt.
First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnaeus declares, "I hereby separate the whales from the fish."
The existence of whales too on this part of the coast, evidenced by the whalebone we found in Esquimaux Cove, may be considered as an argument for an open sea; and a connection with Hudson's Bay is rendered more probable from the same kind of fish abounding on the coasts we visited, and on those to the north of Churchill River.
Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the forecastles of American whalers. Some of them are done with much accuracy. At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung by the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best.
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