In 1872 the sperm whale had almost disappeared from the Atlantic
Ocean, and old whalemen thought that he was doomed to practical
extinction. For twenty years or more sperm-whaling voyages had been
lengthened to an average of nearly four years, and it had been
necessary to hunt him over all the tropic and temperate seas of the
world. I had reason to believe that Captain Nelson had not really
expected to find any whales on the Hatteras grounds, and I know that
he expected to find none on the Western grounds. Besides, it was late
in the season by the time we reached the Western grounds, and it was
likely that the whales would have disappeared, if they had been there
at all. The mastheads were kept manned, however, as they were pretty
generally.
We were rolling along easily in a light westerly breeze when
Alexander, a Kanaka from Mr. Tilton’s boat, sounded his falsetto cry
from the foremasthead. It was early in the forenoon, and I was busy
below; but I heard the quick patter of feet on deck, and I knew what
it meant. So I dropped everything just where I stood, and ran up.
I happened to see the spout at once, a beautiful, light, feathery
thing in the bright sunlight, more like the drooping ostrich plume
than ever. There was but the one spout, repeated lazily at intervals,
although the others of the pod, if there were others, might have
sounded, and be feeding. The volume of the spout and the force with
which it was expelled, as well as the interval between spouts,
indicated a full-grown bull.
The whale had been sighted off the port bow, and was now nearly abeam
of us, going slowly to the westward, and making a course which took
him nearer to the ship as {126} he went on. Mr. Brown was already
away, with the light westerly breeze abeam, to head him off. Mr.
Wallet, as usual, was some minutes longer in getting his sail up, and
in getting under way. He headed still more to the westward. We began
to wear ship, and to change our course to follow them.
The boats went on, getting nearer the course of the whale, which
continued to swim with great deliberation. He seemed to be bent upon
getting nowhere in particular, and likely to achieve his purpose. By
the time the ship had got on her new course Mr. Brown had already
taken in his sail and got his mast down, and the men were paddling
until the whale should discover them. Mr. Wallet should have done the
same thing. He was near enough; but he delayed, as he did invariably,
a little too long. Just after he had given the order, and while
his men were busy with the mast,—they had made a little more noise
than necessary, perhaps,—the whale saw them, no doubt imperfectly.
He hesitated for an instant, then raised his flukes and lobtailed,
the blow on the water making a noise which sounded, to us on the
ship, like the report of a big gun, and raised a cataract of spray
and green water. This drenched the men in Mr. Brown’s boat, who had
paddled up on him from behind and were trying to get into position
to sink their irons just behind the side fin. Wright was standing
in the bow, a harpoon in his hands, and the boat was just even with
the flukes. I saw the men suddenly give way hard—they had no time to
change to their oars; then the whale started for Mr. Wallet’s boat,
and Wright let go both his irons, getting both fast, but well back
toward the small instead of near the side fin, where he had hoped to
place them.
The sting of the irons only served to make him the more furious and
bent upon destruction, and he rushed full-tilt upon Mr. Wallet. Mr.
Brown dropped back, the men put aside their paddles, and I saw two or
three turns {127} taken about the loggerhead. Then Wright came aft;
and Mr. Brown took his place in the bow, with a lance in his hand.
A thin wreath of blue smoke rose from the loggerhead, although they
were throwing water upon the line. Wright took another turn, and the
boat plunged wildly through the sea after the whale.
The whale seemed to be annoyed by the drag of the boat all on one
side of him. I thought I saw him gnash his jaws, although they were
kicking up such a fuss that I could not be sure. The ship was less
than half a mile away, and the ship and the whale were slowly working
nearer each other. It must have been the drag of the boat which
caused the whale to miss Mr. Wallet’s boat, which he did by a very
narrow margin, coming up for the attack about an oar’s length from
the starboard side, and abeam. That seemed to put him beside himself
with fury, and he turned at once upon Mr. Brown, shaking his head
and gnashing his jaws. As he turned, George Hall saw his chance and
planted his irons deep in his other side. If Mr. Wallet had been of
the quality of Hall or of some others of his men, he would have done
uniformly better.
Hall’s irons served to confuse the whale a little, although not to
shake his purpose of destroying Mr. Brown’s boat. He hesitated for an
instant, but immediately went on, and disappeared a short distance
from the boat. He had not sounded, however, which could be told from
the way Mr. Wallet’s line was going out. Hall had changed places
with Mr. Wallet, and had three or four turns around the loggerhead,
although not enough to check the line entirely. I saw the men in Mr.
Brown’s boat back water as hard as they could, and the next instant
the whale’s huge head shot out of the water just ahead of the boat,
the jaws gnashing. The lower jaw seemed to be crumpled up at the tip.
He just missed the boat completely, but got the whale line between
his jaws, and chewed it, getting a tooth through it, as I found out
later, and fraying the line badly. {128}
He came up out of the water so far that his side fin showed, and the
ends of Hall’s harpoons, and Mr. Brown seized that moment to lance
him. He got in two thrusts with the lance, and when he withdrew
it, its shank was bent almost at right angles. He did not stop to
straighten it, but seized another, which, however, he had no chance
to use.
As the whale went on, Mr. Brown’s line slipped off his tooth. The
teeth of the sperm whale are roughly conical in shape, and curved
slightly backward, with a considerable space between them; and there
are no teeth in the upper jaw. This will account for the fact that
the line was not bitten in two at once. The lines were crossed, too,
for Wright’s harpoons were in the left side of the whale, while the
boat from which they had come was now on his right side; and Mr.
Wallet’s boat had been on his right side when Hall planted his irons,
but was now behind him and well to his left. Both lines had slipped
over his back. Mr. Brown’s men had been unable to take in the slack
of their line as fast as the whale had come, and by some mischance
the whale had got a turn around his jaw. By a further mischance, the
whale turned again in the same direction, twisting the lines over
his back, and going over Mr. Wallet’s line this time. He was pretty
well tangled in the lines, and Mr. Wallet’s was wrapped about his
body once. Mr. Brown’s men were heaving in on their line as fast as
they could, and when, in the whale’s frantic career, it suddenly came
taut, it gripped his jaw like an Indian halter. This seemed to throw
him into a frenzy. He stopped, lobtailed several times, as rapidly as
such a huge mechanism can, lashing the water into foam, and caught
sight of the ship, not a quarter of a mile away. Before either of the
boats could haul up on him, he had started for her at full speed. Mr.
Brown’s line parted at the frayed spot; and before the whale had gone
very far, Mr. Wallet reached down to the hatchet at his knees, raised
it above his head, and cut. {129}
What impelled Mr. Wallet to cut I do not know. Very probably he was
simply afraid—panic-struck; although cutting loose from a fighting
whale, vicious and frenzied, and bent upon the destruction of the
boats, is perhaps not uncommon. But this whale, although vicious and
frenzied, had done no harm to the boats, so far, and cutting did not
seem justified. It seemed even less justified to the officers and
men than it did to me. As Peter told me, in confidence, he thought
there must be something wrong with that whale’s sight or sense of
direction, for he had missed his aim every time; missed by a little,
but he had missed. It was not necessary for him to say what he
thought of our second mate for cutting. I knew well enough.
The whale’s very obvious intention was to ram us, and we knew what
the consequences might be. The wheel was thrown hard over, and two
of the officers ran below. I have said that the old Clearchus was
slow in minding her helm, but she never seemed so slow as she did
on that occasion. Mr. Tilton and Mr. Baker had taken the two bomb
guns, which the men had brought up from below, before the ship had
changed her course five degrees. She went a little faster after that,
but her course was not changed many degrees when the whale was upon
us. The two bomb lances were fired over the quarter when he was less
than half a dozen fathoms away. They must have made a tremendous
commotion in the interior of the whale, for I could see him shiver,
but he did not stop swimming immediately, although there was no power
in his movements. He came on, and struck the ship a glancing blow
on the quarter which shook her from keel to trucks, and I thought
the foretopgallantmast would come down. The Admiral, up there in the
hoops, was shaken about like a pea in a box.
After the blow, the whale stopped swimming, and rested quietly just
astern of the ship—except for his {130} shivering. It was then that
Peter remarked to me on his defective sight, and observed further
that if he had had a grain of sense, he would have taken the chance
of Mr. Wallet’s cutting to get clean away, which he might have done
perfectly well. Then Mr. Baker, thinking to put a quick end to him,
I suppose, fired another bomb lance into him. This had just the
opposite effect. The whale stirred—no doubt he would have roared if
that were customary with whales—and turned, and made for the boats.
He missed again, but passed between them with open jaws, so close to
Mr. Wallet’s boat that he gathered in and crushed to splinters both
oars on the port side, and almost swamped the boat with the wave he
made. Mr. Brown was a little astern of Mr. Wallet, and as the whale
passed him, he gave a deep thrust with the lance. He had no time to
withdraw it, although he tried to, and bent the shank of the lance in
his attempt.
That was not the end of misfortune. The frayed end of line from
Mr. Brown’s boat was not completely hauled in, and there were some
fathoms still hanging down from the bow. The whale caught this frayed
end between his jaws as he passed, and worried it as a terrier does
a string. The effect was the same as if it had still been fast to
the iron in his body. The line tautened instantly, and whirled
the bow around, and then, as no attention was being given to the
loggerhead end of a frayed line with a few fathoms over the bow, it
began to snake out of its tub. I do not know how it happened—nobody
knew—but Wright somehow got a kink in the line around his leg, and
was snaked the length of the boat, kicking three men in the head on
his meteoric course and out at the bow. Mr. Brown and Wright had been
in the habit of doing without the kicking-strap. I have explained
the kicking-strap. It is a piece of heavy line which extends loosely
along the top of the clumsy cleat, and has its ends knotted under.
{131} The whale line passes under it on its way to the groove in
the stem. There was nothing, therefore, to stop Wright except the
frail peg in the stem, and breaking the peg was nothing to him. He
disappeared overboard.
Everybody in the boat had given him up when, suddenly, the line went
slack, and Wright shot to the surface. He had somehow managed to whip
out his knife and cut the line. They got him aboard the boat at once.
It was very nearly the end of poor Wright. He was in great pain and
almost done, his hip dislocated, although no bones were broken.
That was about the end of the whale. He went on for a little way,
enveloped by the twisting lines. Then he stopped, shivered once
more, and went into his flurry, spouting thick, black blood. That
flurry, as I think of it now, could not have been pleasant to see,
but I do not remember that it aroused any disgust in me at the time.
It was not far from the ship, and I can only recollect a consuming
curiosity, on my part, to see him die, and how he did it. It could
not have differed very much, except in the size of the beast, from
the scenes at John Green’s slaughter-house.
When the whale was alongside, and the cutting-in was under way, we
found that one eye was sightless and almost gone. This may have been
due to fighting, as the twisted jaw was supposed to be due to that
cause. I examined the jaw carefully when it was on deck, as did most
of the crew. The tip of the jaw was bent sidewise, about two feet of
it. It was a mystery to me, and ever since has remained a mystery,
how the jawbone of a full-grown whale could be so bent. I could
understand how it might be broken, but to be bent as this was, or to
be curled around in a spiral, as was the case in our later specimen,
it seemed to me that it would have had to be done while the whale
was young, and the bone soft and cartilaginous. I could not imagine
whales of that tender age fighting {132} fiercely enough to bend a
jaw or put out an eye, and I should be convinced—as to the bending of
the jaw—only by actually seeing the jaw of a whale bent in a fight
with another whale. It might be sufficient if I heard of such an
occurrence from a man in whose powers of observation and in whose
veracity I had absolute confidence; but who would believe the yarn of
the average whaleman? Whalemen are notoriously inaccurate observers,
anyway.
This whale was an old one, rather old for a whale, although by no
means decrepit. What that means in years of life I do not know. The
natural life of a whale, barring accidents, would be expected to be
of the same order as the life of an elephant, which is popularly
believed to live to a great age, from one hundred to three hundred
years. I should think that a whale three hundred years old would
yield little oil; and this whale of ours made nearly sixty barrels.
Poor Wright! We had no surgeon, of course, better than the captain
and Mr. Wallet. Wallet was a whale-surgeon. Wright was in great pain
for over a week, until we got into Fayal, and his thigh swelled to
great size. I used to hear him groaning at night in a subdued fashion.
{133}