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Updated: June 3, 2025
The "Albatross" dropped towards the sea, and remained, about fifty feet above it. There was no ship in sight of that the two colleagues soon assured themselves nor was there any land to be seen to which they could swim, providing Robur made no attempt to recapture them. Several jets of water from the spout holes soon announced the presence of the whales as they came to the surface to breathe.
And this reaction wasn't long in coming. For three months, during which each day seemed like a century, the Abraham Lincoln plowed all the northerly seas of the Pacific, racing after whales sighted, abruptly veering off course, swerving sharply from one tack to another, stopping suddenly, putting on steam and reversing engines in quick succession, at the risk of stripping its gears, and it didn't leave a single point unexplored from the beaches of Japan to the coasts of America.
Sylvia can't abide cursing and swearing, I'm sure. We're gentlemen serving his Majesty on board the Alcestis, and this proper young fellow shall be helped on to more honour and glory than he'd ever get bobbing for whales. Tell Sylvia this, with my love; Jack Carter's love, if she's anxious about my name. One of the sailors laughed at this rude humour; another bade Carter hold his stupid tongue.
At eight o'clock in the evening, reckoning as above ground, where there is day and night, we are not more than two leagues from the mighty beast. Its long, black, enormous, mountainous body, lies on the top of the water like an island. But then sailors have been said to have gone ashore on sleeping whales, mistaking them for land. Is it illusion, or is it fear?
Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing straight up, leaps thy apotheosis! The Advocate As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling; and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales.
Spring was in the air, and if there were no green growing things to gladden our eyes, there were at least many seals, penguins, and even whales disporting themselves in the leads. The time for renewed action was coming, and though our situation was grave enough, we were facing the future hopefully. The dogs were kept in a state of uproar by the sight of so much game.
We had run into the midst of the school of whales. Captain Rogers being called by Mr. Robbins, took a look around the sea-line, cast a shrewd look at the heavens, went and squinted at the glass, and then ordered the canvas reefed down and all hands to breakfast. The prospect, of both weather and whales, was for a good kill. The healthy rivalry between the boats was now manifest.
Schools of whales grew so tame that day after day they played about the ship among the porpoises and the sharks without the least apparent fear of us, and we pelted them with empty bottles for lack of better sport. Twenty-four hours afterward these bottles would be still lying on the glassy water under our noses, showing that the ship had not moved out of her place in all that time.
This was not very encouraging for a start, nor did the next week see us do any better. Several times we saw other ships with whales alongside, but we got no show at all. Now, I had hoped a great deal from our cruise on these grounds, because I had heard whispers of a visit to the icy Sea of Okhotsk, and the prospect was to me a horrible one. I never did take any stock in Arctic work.
But a sailor's life is such a rough one, requiring so much energy and hearty good-will to his work, that he cannot afford to allow the sorrows of his heart to sit long on his countenance. In a day or two after no one would have supposed we had lost one of our best men. Whales appeared in great numbers around us.
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