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"That's what they mean by pointing to our masts and tackle. You see, they couldn't manage with that stick of theirs, and they say they'll give us a third of the loot. We'll do it, mate, and I'll tell you why. The wind has fallen, and they can tow us out. If it's a sperm-whale they've found, there ought to be thirty or forty barrels of oil in him, let alone the blubber and bone.
They threw me a bight of rope from the ship, and I clambered back on deck. Captain Coffin told me to go below and change my dripping clothes, and then I could go in the boat with him and pull the after oar. You may lay to it that I flew down those cabin stairs, for if there was anything in the world I longed for, it was to get a chance to see a sperm-whale killed.
From July to November two 'schools' of killers may be seen every day, either cruising to and fro across the entrance of the bay, or engaged in a Titanic combat with a whale a 'right' whale, a 'humpback, or the long, swift 'fin-back. Never have they been known to tackle the great sperm-whale, except when one of those mighty creatures has been wounded by his human enemies.
The broad quarter-deck, too, where these gentry promenaded, is now often choked up by the enormous head of the sperm-whale, and vast masses of unctuous blubber; and every where reeks with oil during the prosecution of the fishery. Sic transit gloria mundi! Thus departs the pride and glory of packet-ships! It is like a broken down importer of French silks embarking in the soap-boning business.
It is formed in the intestine of the sperm-whale, and contains fragments of the hard parts of cuttle-fishes, which are the food of these whales. "Hair-balls" are formed in the intestines of various large vegetarian animals and occasionally stony concretions of various chemical composition are formed in the urinary bladder of various animals, as well as of man.
We were just in time to see a shower of spray falling, and the flukes or tail of some monstrous fish disappear in the sea a few hundred yards off. We waited some time to see if he would rise again. As we stood, the sea seemed to open up at our very feet; an immense spout of water was sent with a snort high into the air, and the huge, blunt head of a sperm-whale rose before us.
Bruno simply wagged his tail. Even Mr. Ben J , a noted authority on whaling-ships, whose mind, however, was said to totter, asked rather confidently if I did not think "it would crawl." "How fast will it crawl?" cried my old captain friend, who had been towed by many a lively sperm-whale. "Tell us how fast," cried he, "that we may get into port in time."
A little aft of "midships" a pyramidal lump of fatty substance projected several feet above the line of the vertebras. It was the spurious or rudimentary dorsal fin, with which the sperm-whale is provided.
Not infrequently the sperm-whale, breaking loose from the harpoon, would ignore the boats and make war upon his chief enemy the ship. The history of the whale fishery is full of such occurrences. The ship "Essex," of Nantucket, was attacked and sunk by a whale, which planned its campaign of destruction as though guided by human intelligence.
Over it and upon it swarmed and clambered thousands of sea-birds, while all around and below the water was thick with gorging sharks. A dreadful, strangling decay fouled all the air. The whale was a sperm-whale, and fully twice the length of the "Bertha Millner." The work of tricing him up occupied the beach-combers throughout the entire day.
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