THE GREAT CACHALOT OR SPERM-WHALE—HOW THE BULLS FIGHT—A BATTLE
OF MONSTERS—GIANTS THAT EAT GIANTS—ENORMOUS CUTTLEFISH—THE
KRAKEN A REALITY—DISAPPOINTED PROFESSORS.
A slight digression arising out of the subject took me away from the
seals, or rather from the cetaceans, or whale tribe, which come next to
them in that orderly sequence by which land animals pass, gradually,
into water ones. Now, therefore, I will resume the thread. One of the
very largest, and, in the sense of our title-page, most romantic of
these great creatures is the sperm-whale or cachalot. He may grow to
seventy-six feet long, with a girth round the hugest part of him of quite
thirty-eight feet. Or say, rather, that he has been known to grow to that
size. What he may sometimes grow to who can say? Just as there are, or
have been, elephants standing twelve feet from the ground, though, as a
rule, this largest of the pachyderms does not attain to much over ten
feet, so _amongst_ the giants of the deep, there are, no doubt, giants
too, though, owing to their rarity, the chances are against the look-out
man, in the crow’s-nest of a whaling-ship, ever setting eyes on one.
Why should not one imagine so, since with much greater facilities for
observation, and much more variety, probably, in the subject of it,
one might walk about the streets of London all one’s life, without ever
seeing a man seven feet high? Yet there _are_ men seven feet high—yes,
and eight feet or nine feet, or at least there have been—and so, perhaps,
in the vast ocean solitudes that they inhabit, there may, here and there,
be a great bull cachalot of eighty or ninety feet long—perhaps even a
hundred feet.
But take him at his more ordinary figure—fifty to seventy feet or
so—and what a gigantic monster he is! In appearance, from the point
of the nose—where he seems to have been sawn through—to the middle of
the back, he is like an enormous black tree-trunk. From here the body
tapers, or rather slopes steeply, to the tail, where first a shape
is observable—that, namely, with which we are familiar in the tail,
or caudal fin, of almost every fish. Unlike the latter, however, the
tail or “_flukes_” of the cachalot—as well as every other whale—lies
flat-ways in the water, with its two points shooting out at right angles
to the two sides, instead of to the back and belly of the creature. The
difference is like that between the way a plank floats on the water, and
the way in which the keel of a boat cuts through it. It seems curious
that there should be such a difference here between the whale and the
fish tribe, seeing that in each the tail has been gradually developed
to meet the requirements of a similar mode of life. This being so, one
might have supposed that the plan of the tail would have been the same
in each, on the principle that one way—as represented by the whole class
of fishes—must be better than any other. Apparently, however, this
is not the case, since cetaceans, on the whole, swim as well and as
swiftly as fish. The tail in their case, and not the two hinder limbs,
as with seals, has been modified into a fin, and it is curious that in
the beaver, where it has also been modified to a considerable extent, in
this direction the expansion has likewise been lateral and not vertical.
We see the same thing in the case of many crustaceans, and throughout
nature this principle of attaining the same end by a variety of means is
apparent. This should teach us that it is a great mistake to think, as
people often do think, that the particular way in which any animal does a
certain thing is the only, or best way, in which it might conceivably be
done. Even a man—if a clever one—might think of some improvement in the
structure of most animals, in relation to their habits of life. Only he
could not carry out these improvements. Nature alone can do that, and in
her own time and way she is always ready to do so.
With this great tail of his—for it is in proportion to his own size, and
sometimes eighteen feet from point to point—the cachalot, like other
whales, can deliver the most tremendous blows, curving it at first, as
does the crocodile, away from the object of its animosity, and then
causing it to leap back with an impetus in which the natural force of
the recoil is increased a hundredfold by the hearty goodwill which the
creature, whose strength is enormous, puts into it. These dreadful
blows are dealt with great sureness of aim, and, considering the size
of the instrument inflicting them, with wonderful rapidity. Beneath
their flail-like vigour and fury the sea foams and spouts, the air is
rent by a succession of thundering roars, like the sound of artillery,
whilst about the mighty causer of all this vast commotion, the waters
heave mountainous, the white waves break, the spray leaps, hisses, and
flies till, huge and rock-like as the mass is that forms the centre of
the area of disturbance, it is almost lost amidst the turmoil that its
own energies have raised. Such scenes may be witnessed when two bull
sperm-whales contend for the favours of one or more females, for, in
opposition to the general rule prevailing amongst the cetaceans, these
huge creatures are polygamous, each full-grown male collecting together
a harem, with which he roams the deep, and which is of greater or lesser
extent, in proportion either to his prowess as a fighter, or his personal
attractions.
It is not with the tail only, however, that these battles are maintained.
The cachalot belongs to the toothed order of whales, and his lower jaw,
which is extraordinarily thin and slight, in comparison with the upper
one and huge snout above it, is furnished with some fifty thick, curved,
and bluntly pointed fangs, each one of which fits into a corresponding
socket of the upper jaw, which latter, contrary to what one might expect,
is toothless. These teeth, in old males, attain a weight of from two to
four pounds apiece, and being composed entirely of ivory, form handsome
as well as curious objects, upon which sailors are fond of exercising
their skill in carving. They are to be seen, sometimes, upon the cottage
mantelshelves of retired old salts, or on those belonging to the parents
of younger ones, having been brought home to them from one of their
son’s trips. Thus furnished, the jaws of the cachalot are a formidable
weapon, even when used against each other, nor does the absence of teeth
from the upper one seem much to diminish their effectiveness. For some
reason, however, possibly because it is easier, or more effective, to
bring the teeth down than to strike them up, the sperm-whale, before he
makes a bite, is accustomed to turn on his back, as does a shark, and
in this position he has often been known to crush a whaling-boat with,
incidentally, a man or two that was in it, between his jaws. With what
effect, therefore, they can be used against the softer substance of any
denizen of the deep that may have the temerity to attack their owner, may
be imagined.
Singly, unless it be the sea-serpent—for whose existence there is a
large and ever-increasing body of evidence—there is no fish or aquatic
mammal that has the least chance with him, but as a sword-fish and two
killers were observed, on one occasion, to unite their efforts for his
destruction, it is possible that the principle of combination may be
sometimes more largely, and, perhaps, successfully employed. On the
occasion in question it was certainly not successful. The sword-fish
struck first, aiming for the heart, but, with a quick movement, the whale
interposed his head, striking the weapon sideways, and then, rolling over
and sinking himself beneath the aggressor, ere the latter had recovered
from the shock of the impact, gaped upwards with distended jaws, which,
closing like a scissors, on either side of the long, thin body, cut it
completely in half. Meanwhile the two killers had dashed in on either
flank, but sweeping suddenly, amidst cataracts of foam, his enormous
tail into the air, the mighty cachalot delivered with it a blow that
stretched one of them dead on the sea, and then turning like a mountain
in the water, pursued the other, now flying for its life. Here against
three lesser giants—the sword-fish alone was some sixteen feet long—the
issue of the combat was soon decided, but how many mighty strokes must be
delivered, how often, yet unavailingly, must the vast jaws open and the
huge teeth tear and rend, before one of two well-matched cachalots has
defeated the other. Not infrequently, the under jaw of sperm whales that
have been harpooned is found wrenched and twisted out of the straight
line—sometimes to a remarkable degree. Such injuries can only have been
received in fighting, and they are a proof of the fury with which such
combats are waged.
Himself a monster, the cachalot feeds on other monsters of the deep, as
huge, almost, and still more monstrous-looking than himself. It has long
been known that some parts of the Pacific and Indian Oceans are inhabited
by cuttlefish of a size sufficient to make them at least an annoyance,
if not an absolute danger, to man. Captain Cook, in his first voyage,
fell in with the floating body of one of these creatures, which, judging
from the parts that were brought home and placed in the Hunterian Museum
in London, must have attained a length of at least six feet, measuring
along the body to the tips of the tentacles. Another, a larger one, was
sighted by the French voyager Peron off the coast of Tasmania. This is
described as rolling over and over in the water, but whether alive or
not, is not distinctly stated. It was, however, taken on board, and, on
measurement, the arms, or tentacles, alone, were found to be seven feet
in length. They were eight in number—the usual complement of the group to
which this species belongs, and which is thence called _octopus_—and had
the appearance of so many writhing and hideous-looking snakes.
Here, then, were ascertained facts, and if Nature could have been held
back by the discreditings and head-shakings of learned professors, who
piqued themselves on sobriety of judgment, these ample measurements
would have remained the limit of her capacity, as far as cuttlefish were
concerned. Here, indeed, in a parrot-beaked, sack-bodied cephalopod,
with eight waving tentacles, seven feet long and as many inches in
circumference at the base, we had a being—it might even be called a
monster—quite capable of seizing, drowning, and even of afterwards
devouring the most expert and stalwart of the Polynesian pearl-divers.
What more was wanted? Why would people keep on talking about and even
seeing cuttlefish of much greater size, by which discoveries professors
themselves ran the risk of having, ultimately, to give their sanction
to, or even to make, statements which, in spite of all their names and
titles could do to make them look sober, would still smack a little of
imaginative wildness? However, the thing continued—as, indeed, it had
begun long before. Pliny—or was it Aristotle—had started it, by talking
of tentacles thirty feet long, and thick in proportion; but Pliny,
though a sort of professor himself, had lived so long ago that he need
not be treated like one. Later, in the Middle Ages, came rumours of
cuttlefishes that flung their vast sucker-armed feelers aloft amidst
the rigging of ships, and overwhelmed them in the waves. But this,
too, was pre-scientific, and though the accounts of the great kraken
of the Norwegian seas belonged to the age in which scientific voyages
had been made, and cuttlefish actually measured, yet these were so
obviously fabulous that no sober-minded scientist, with a reputation for
incredulity to maintain, need trouble himself about them.
It was in 1750 that Pontoppidan, a Danish writer, and for the last
seventeen years of his life Bishop of Bergen, in Norway, first gave
to the world his account of the kraken and sea-serpent, and it must
be admitted that what he says of both of them—but especially of the
former—is sufficient to justify many a head-shake, on the part of
grave people. The kraken, according to the bishop, has a back which,
when it rises from the sea-bottom, provides anyone who may be in the
neighbourhood, with a comfortable island of about a mile and a half
in circumference. For an island, accordingly, it is often, and very
naturally, mistaken. It may be landed upon and walked over with ease
and comfort, but has the disadvantage of sinking slowly and leaving
one in the water, if anything of a disagreeable nature, such as the
lighting of a fire or the digging of a hole, is instituted upon it. Upon
provocation, moreover, or when the creature is hungry, a forest of vast,
snake-like trees, being its enormous tentacles, rise from and wave over
the supposed island, seizing and overwhelming any vessel that may be
within their reach. As it sinks, too, a violent whirlpool is caused,
owing to the displacement of the water consequent on the disappearance
of so huge a body—in which whirlpool ships are sucked down. The waters,
for miles about it, are discoloured with a turbid fluid—the well-known
inky discharge of the cuttlefish—and shoals of fishes, that have been
attracted by the monster’s musky smell, and have lost their way in the
darkness, are received into its vasty maw.
Such was the kraken, and with such an example before one it is no
wonder that the learned world continued to fight stubbornly against the
admission of tentacles more than seven or eight feet long, and eight
inches round at the base. However, they still went on growing, and have
become, at last, more authentic, so that there is now little doubt
that the cuttlefish, on which the great cachalot habitually feeds, are
sometimes of a size sufficient to bear comparison with his own enormous
bulk. That they ever equal it—at least in weight—I should certainly
hesitate to affirm, but that there are mighty cephalopods, whose eight
or ten arms are capable of clasping the huge barrel of a sperm-whale’s
body, and must, therefore, be some thirty feet in length, appears to be
settled by ocular demonstration. Mr. Bullen, to whose interesting work,
_The Cruise of the Cachalot_, I am indebted for most of this chapter,
was once looking over his ship’s side at midnight, when there arose in
the midst of that broad and shining pathway which the full moon of the
tropics flings down upon the sea, a very large cachalot struggling with
and, as it soon appeared, devouring a squid, or cuttlefish, which Mr.
Bullen distinctly says was almost as large as itself. The great arms of
this eerie-looking creature were writhed about the whale’s vast head,
almost, if not quite, the hugest part of him, and certainly so, when,
as was constantly here the case, the jaws were distended. As for the
head of the cuttlefish, Mr. Bullen, after a very careful examination of
it through the night-glasses—and it must be remembered that there was
the whale’s head beside it, to compare it with—came to the conclusion
that it was, at least, as large as one of the ship’s pipes, holding 850
gallons, but probably a good deal larger. The eyes alone he estimated as
at least a foot in diameter. Huge as was this cuttlefish, it had not the
smallest chance in its struggle with the cachalot. True struggle, indeed,
as between the two, there was none, for the whale was simply eating the
cuttlefish, nor did he experience any difficulty in doing so.
Taking the softness of the cephalopoda into consideration, and comparing
it with the hard, solid, block-like body of the whale, it is not easy
to imagine that there would ever be a different result to a rencontre
between the two. Still, this may be possible. By the mere doctrine of
chances, it is very unlikely that the largest specimen of a creature but
very seldom seen should represent the greatest size to which it ever
attains. Eight great tentacles of, let us say, thirty feet long are,
as we have seen, incapable of holding a large bull cachalot powerless
in their embrace. But to what length may not those tentacles grow, and
would a length of fifty, seventy, or eighty feet be sufficient to do
so? Sixteen mighty cables—for arms like these would wind at least twice
about their enemy—would make a net from which even the hugest whale might
find it difficult to free himself, and even he might at last yield to
that paralysing effect which the suckers of the cuttlefish are supposed
to have upon their prey. Then, again, there are female cachalots as well
as males, and these are but half the size of the latter. Upon them or the
young, are the wrongs of the giant octopus ever avenged?
I have speculated, in face of the incident here alluded to, upon the
possibility of a cuttlefish’s tentacles sometimes reaching thirty feet
in length, but there seems to be better evidence—that of actual contact
and measurement—of their sometimes being longer still. Whilst in the
death agony the cachalot belches out the contents of his vast stomach,
which consist, for the most part, of huge-sized fragments of such great
cuttlefishes, which have been bitten off and swallowed whole. Mr. Bullen
fished up and examined one of these fragments, which he found to be a
piece of an arm about five feet square, having on it six or seven round
sucking discs, of the size of saucers, armed on their outer circumference
with large sharp hooks resembling a tiger’s claw. On a subsequent
occasion, still larger fragments were observed, their size being taken
to equal that of the ship’s hatch-house, which was eight feet long, with
a breadth and height of six feet. What must have been the length of the
entire tentacle, of which such blocks as these were the component parts?
Since one of seven feet long measured only seven or eight inches round
the base, the calculation is not difficult to make, but I will leave the
making of it to someone else. If we suppose, however, that these gobbets
represented portions of the expanded ends, only, of two greatly elongated
tentacles, which the various species of decapods possess, over and above
the other eight, this would make their entire length immense: since such
expanded part bears but a small proportion to the tentacle as a whole,
and is not much more than twice its narrower circumference.
Look at it in what way we will, the creature that was bitten into such
fragments as these, must have been of proportions so vast that the Bishop
Pontoppidan himself can hardly have erred more in overstatement, than
our grudging scientists have, in under-estimation. Seven feet for an arm
or a tentacle! That was enough—we were to be satisfied with that. But
no, neither we nor the cachalots are going to be satisfied with short
commons. Though professors be virtuous there shall still be cakes and ale
in the world. We shall have our monsters—our krakens and sea-serpents—let
them bite their thumbs at them as they will. The Prince of Monte Carlo,
too, not many years ago, found one for himself, and his naturalist called
it _Lepidotenthis Grimaldii_. With a Latin name and a naturalist, there
can surely be no more objection.