THE A, B, C OF WHALES
One damp morning, with frequent showers falling here and there over the
sea and not a drop wetting the brig, Captain Winchester suddenly stopped
pacing up and down the weather side of the quarter-deck, threw his head up
into the wind, and sniffed the air.
"There's sperm whale about as sure as I live," he said to Mr. Landers. "I
smell 'em."
Mr. Landers inhaled the breeze through his nose in jerky little sniffs.
"No doubt about it," he replied. "You could cut the smell with a knife."
I was at the wheel and overheard this talk. I smiled. These old sea dogs,
I supposed, were having a little joke. The skipper saw the grin on my
face.
"Humph, you don't believe I smell whale, eh?" he said. "I can smell whale
like a bird dog smells quail. Take a sniff at the wind. Can't you smell it
yourself?"
I gave a few hopeful sniffs.
"No," I said, "I can't smell anything unless, perhaps, salt water."
"You've got a poor smeller," returned the captain. "The wind smells rank
and oily. That means sperm whale. If I couldn't smell it, I could taste
it. I'll give you a plug of tobacco, if we don't raise sperm before dark."
He didn't have to pay the tobacco. Within an hour, we raised a sperm
whale spouting far to windward and traveling in the same direction as the
brig. The captain hurried to the cabin for his binoculars. As he swung
himself into the shrouds to climb to the mast-head, he shouted to me,
"Didn't I tell you I could smell 'em?" The watch was called. The crew of
the captain's boat was left to work the ship and Mr. Landers and Gabriel
lowered in the larboard and waist boats. Sails were run up and we went
skimming away on our first whale hunt. We had a long beat to windward
ahead of us and as the whale was moving along at fair speed, remaining
below fifteen minutes or so between spouts, it was slow work cutting down
the distance that separated us from it.
"See how dat spout slant up in de air?" remarked old Gabriel whom the
sight of our first sperm had put in high good humor.
We looked to where the whale was blowing and saw its fountain shoot into
the air diagonally, tufted with a cloudy spread of vapor at the top.
"You know why it don't shoot straight up?"
No one knew.
"Dat feller's blow hole in de corner ob his square head--dat's why," said
Gabriel. "He blow his fountain out in front of him. Ain't no udder kind
o' whale do dat. All de udder kind blow straight up. All de differ in de
worl' between dat sperm whale out dere and de bowhead and right whale up
nort'. Ain't shaped nothin' a-tall alike. Bowhead and right whale got big
curved heads and big curved backs. Sperm whale's about one-third head and
his back ain't got no bow to it--not much--jest lies straight out behind
his head. He look littler in de water dan de right and bowhead whale. But
he ain't. He's as big as de biggest whale dat swims de sea. I've seen a
150 barrel sperm dat measure seventy feet.
"Blow!" added the old negro as he caught sight of the whale spouting again.
"Bowhead and right whale got no teeth," he continued. "Dey got only long
slabs o' baleen hung wit' hair in de upper jaw. Sperm whale got teeth same
as you and me--about twenty on a side and all in his lower jaw. Ain't got
no teeth in his upper jaw a-tall. His mouth is white inside and his teeth
stand up five or six inches out o' his gums and are wide apart and sharp
and pointed and look jes' like de teeth of a saw. Wen he open his mouth,
his lower jaw fall straight down and his mouth's big enough to take a
whale boat inside.
"Sperm whale's fightin' whale. He fight wit' his tail and his teeth. He
knock a boat out de water wit' his flukes and he scrunch it into kindlin'
wood wit' his teeth. He's got fightin' sense too--he's sly as a fox. W'en
I was young feller, I was in de sperm trade mysel' and used to ship out
o' New Bedford round Cape o' Good Hope for sperm whale ground in Indian
Ocean and Sout' Pacific. Once I go on top a sperm whale in a boat an'
he turn flukes and lash out wit' his tail but miss us. Den he bring up
his old head and take a squint back at us out o' his foxy little eye and
begin to slew his body roun' till he get his tail under de boat. But de
boatheader too smart fer him and we stern oars and get out o' reach. But
de whale didn't know we done backed out o' reach and w'en he bring up dat
tail it shoot out o' de water like it was shot out o' a cannon. Mighty
fine fer us he miss us dat time.
"But dat don't discourage dat whale a-tall. He swim round and slew round
and sight at us out o' his eye and at las' he get under de boat. Den he
lift it on de tip o' his tail sky-high and pitch us all in de water. Dat
was jes' what he been working for. He swim away and turn round and come
shootin' back straight fer dat boat and w'en he get to it, he crush it
wit' his teeth and chew it up and shake his head like a mad bulldog until
dere warn't nothin' left of dat boat but a lot o' kindlin' wood. But dat
warn't all. He swim to a man who wuz lying across an oar to keep afloat
and he chew dat man up and spit him out in li'l pieces and we ain't never
see nothin' o' dat feller again.
"Guess that whale was goin' to give us all de same medicine, but he ain't
have time. De udder boats come up and fill him full o' harpoons and keep
stickin' der lances into him and kill him right where he lays and he never
had no chance to scoff the rest o' us. But if it ain't fer dem boats,
I guess dat feller eat us all jes' like plum duff. Sperm whale, some
fighter, believe me.
"Dere he white waters--blow!" added Gabriel as the whale came to the
surface again.
"Sperm whale try out de bes' oil," the garrulous old whaleman went on.
"Bowhead and right whale got thicker blubber and make more oil, but sperm
whale oil de bes'. He got big cistern--what dey call a 'case'--in de top
ob his head and it's full o' spermaceti, sloshing about in dere and jes'
as clear as water. His old head is always cut off and hoist on deck to
bale out dat case. Many times dey find ambergrease (ambergis) floating
beside a dead sperm whale. It's solid and yellowish and stuck full o'
cuttle feesh beaks dat de whale's done swallowed but ain't digest. Dey
makes perfume out o' dat ambergrease and it's worth its weight in gold.
I've offen seen it in chunks dat weighed a hundred pounds.
"You see a sperm whale ain't eat nothin' but cuttle feesh--giant squid,
dey calls 'em, or devil feesh. Dey certainly is terrible fellers--is dem
devil feesh. Got arms twenty or thirty feet long wit' sucking discs all
over 'em and a big fat body in de middle ob dese snaky arms, wit' big
pop-eyes as big as water buckets and a big black beak like a parrot's
to tear its food wit'. Dose devil feesh. Dey certainly is terrible
fellers--is dem sperm whale nose 'em out and eat 'em. Some time dey comes
to de top and de whale and de cuttle feesh fights it out. I've hearn old
whalers say dey seen fights between sperm whale and cuttle feesh but I
ain't never seen dat and I reckon mighty few fellers ever did. But when a
sperm whale is killed, he spews out chunks o' cuttle feesh and I've seen
de water about a dead sperm thick wit' white chunks of cuttle feesh as big
as a sea ches' and wit' de suckin' disc still on 'em.
"Blow!" said Gabriel again with his eyes on the whale. "Dat feesh
certainly some traveler."
We were hauling closer to the whale. I could see it distinctly by this
time and could note how square and black its head was. Its appearance
might be compared not inaptly to a box-car glistening in the sun under a
fresh coat of black paint. It did not cut the water but pushed it in white
foam in front of it.
"Sperm pretty scarce nowadays," Gabriel resumed. "Nothing like as
plentiful in Pacific waters as dey used to be in de ole days. Whalers done
pretty well thinned 'em out. But long ago, it used to be nothin' to see
schools of a hundred, mostly cows wit' three or four big bulls among 'em."
"Any difference between a bowhead and a right whale?" some one asked.
"O good Lord, yes," answered Gabriel. "Big difference. Right whale
thinner whale dan a bowhead, ain't got sech thick blubber neither. He's
quicker in de water and got nothin' like such long baleen. You ketch right
whale in Behring Sea. I ain't never see none in de Arctic Ocean. You ketch
bowhead both places. Right whale fightin' feesh, too, but he ain't so
dangerous as a sperm."
Let me add that I give this statement of the old whaleman for what it is
worth. All books I have ever read on the subject go on the theory that the
Greenland or right whale is the same animal as the bowhead. We lowered for
a right whale later in the voyage in Behring Sea. To my untrained eyes,
it looked like a bowhead which we encountered every few days while on the
Arctic Ocean whaling grounds. But there was no doubt or argument about it
among the old whalemen aboard. To them it was a "right whale" and nothing
else. Old Gabriel may have known what he was talking about. Despite the
naturalists, whalers certainly make a pronounced distinction.
By the time Gabriel had imparted all this information, we had worked to
within a half mile of our whale which was still steaming along at the
rate of knots. They say a sperm whale has ears so small they are scarcely
detected, but it has a wonderfully keen sense of hearing for all that.
Our whale must have heard us or seen us. At any rate it bade us a sudden
good-bye and scurried off unceremoniously over the rim of the world. The
boats kept on along the course it was heading for over an hour, but the
whale never again favored us with so much as a distant spout. Finally
signals from the brig's mast-head summoned us aboard.
As the men had had no practice in the boats before, both boats lowered
sail and we started to row back to the vessel. We had pulled about a mile
when Mendez, who was acting as boatsteerer, said quietly, "Blow! Blackfish
dead ahead."
"Aye, aye," replied Gabriel. "Now stand by, Tomas. I'll jes' lay you
aboard one o' dem blackfeesh and we'll teach dese green fellers somethin'
'bout whalin'."
There were about fifty blackfish in the school. They are a species of
small toothed whale, from ten to twenty feet long, eight or ten feet in
circumference and weighing two or three tons. They were gamboling and
tumbling like porpoises. Their black bodies flashed above the surface
in undulant curves and I wondered if, when seen at a distance, these
little cousins of the sperm had not at some time played their part in
establishing the myth of the sea serpent.
"Get ready, Tomas," said Gabriel as we drew near the school.
"Aye, aye, sir," responded Mendez.
Pulling away as hard as we could, we shot among the blackfish. Mendez
selected a big one and drove his harpoon into its back. Almost at the
same time Mr. Lander's boat became fast to another. Our fish plunged and
reared half out of water, rolled and splashed about, finally shot around
in a circle and died. Mr. Lander's fish was not fatally hit and when it
became apparent it would run away with a tub of line, Little Johnny,
the boatsteerer, cut adrift and let it go. Mendez cut our harpoon free
and left our fish weltering on the water. Blackfish yield a fairly
good quality of oil, but one was too small a catch to potter with. Our
adventure among the blackfish was merely practice for the boat crews to
prepare them for future encounters with the monarchs of the deep.