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Updated: June 18, 2025
It was a hard pull, for the whale had led them a long chase, and as the calm continued, those left aboard could not approach to meet the boats. The exhausted men were cheered, however, on getting aboard late that night, to find that the other boats had been equally successful, each of them having captured a sperm-whale.
Other inflammable substances, too, are found in the carcass of the sperm-whale: so that, in the article of fuel, the crew of the Catamaran had been unexpectedly furnished with a stock by which they might keep up a blazing fire for the whole of a twelvemonth.
Most of the vessels which put out of Nantucket and New Bedford, in the earliest days of the industry, after whales of this sort, were not fitted with kettles and furnaces for trying out the oil at the time of the catch, as was always the custom in the sperm-whale fishery. Their prey was near at hand, their voyages comparatively short.
Symes, says he, 'it's a-bloawin' right smart peart, an' I don't see fitten for to lower. "I went for'ard. The lookaout he hailed again. 'On deck, sir, says he, 'thar she blaows, an' spouts, an' breaches, an' it's a right smart sperm, too. "I went aft. 'Cap'n Symes, says I, 'thar she bloaws, an' spouts, an' breaches, an' its a right smart sperm-whale, too. Shall I lower?
Taking another look at the ships which had now crossed our wake, he added, "Blast those Nantucketers! They can smell a sperm-whale five miles to their leeward any time." He had come down from the rigging, and ordered the head-sails thrown back. The order was obeyed, and stepping to the ship's waist, he placed his powerful shoulders against the whale-boat, and said: "Now, boys, all shove together!"
It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any. Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated; oftener the boat's bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, on which the headsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body.
Instances of the combativeness of the sperm-whale are not confined to the records of the whale fishery. Even as I write I find in a current San Francisco newspaper the story of the pilot-boat "Bonita," sunk near the Farallon Islands by a whale that attacked her out of sheer wantonness and lust for fight.
Now one boat gained an inch on the others, then it lost ground again as the crew of another put forth additional energy, and the three danced over the glassy sea as if the inanimate planks had been suddenly endued with life, and inspired with the spirit that stirred the men. A large sperm-whale lay about a quarter of a mile ahead, rolling lazily in the trough of the sea.
Captain Ethan Keller, of the Casilda of Nantucket, was in a very bad temper, for in four days he had lost two of the five boats the barque carried one had been hopelessly stove by the dreaded "underclip" given her by a crafty old bull sperm-whale, and the other, which was in charge of the second mate, had not been seen for seventy hours.
It is still used in the manufacture of esteemed perfumes, and is sold at five guineas the ounce. It is found floating on the surface of the ocean, and is a concretion of imperfectly digested matter from the intestine of a whale probably the sperm-whale.
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