WHALES AND THEIR ENEMIES—THE THRESHER AND THE SWORD-FISH—SPORT
AMONGST ANIMALS—THE SWORD-FISH AND ITS WAYS—CANNIBALISM IN
NATURE—THE SHARK AND THE PILOT-FISH.
The sword-fish and killer, whose acquaintance we made in the last
chapter, are two of the principal enemies of the larger whales;
especially of those that are provided with baleen, or whalebone, instead
of teeth, since they are more defenceless than the toothed whales, as
represented by the redoubtable cachalot. Another of these enemies is the
well-known thresher-fish, a species of shark which grows to a length of
some fifteen feet, more than half of which is taken up by the tail, or
rather by the upper lobe of the caudal fin, which is extraordinarily
developed. In proportion to the bulk of the shark, it is thin and
flexible, but the integument which forms its outer covering is so tough,
and its edges so sharp, that wielded, as it is, with enormous power,
it can cut almost like a razor. Armed with this formidable weapon, the
thresher, as soon as it sees a whale rise, swims towards it, and leaping
several yards into the air, delivers, with it, as it comes down, a
terrible blow across the giant’s back. So great is the force exerted that
the silence of the ocean is suddenly broken by a report like that of a
musket, whilst the waters are instantly stained with the blood of the
whale. The latter, roused to fury with the pain, endeavours to retaliate
by striking with its own tail, in the manner of the cachalot, but, though
a single blow of it would be fatal, the agility of the shark is such,
and his size, in proportion to his gigantic adversary, so small, that he
avoids this contingency, and continues to leap and to ply his instrument
of flagellation almost unceasingly.
No single thresher, indeed, could do more than discommode a whale, but
these attacks are usually delivered by two or more in company, whilst
often threshers and sword-fish pursue their game, together, in packs. In
this case, whilst a constant volley of blows falls on the whale’s devoted
back, the sword-fish dive beneath his belly and stab upwards with their
much more formidable sword or lance. As against the thresher, the whale’s
best resource is to dive, but this brings no relief from the attacks
of the other, and on his rising to breathe again, the flagellation is
renewed. It is no wonder that, weakened with loss of blood, and covered
with deep stabs, some of which, perhaps, may be mortal, the whale has at
last to succumb. Possibly from amongst the pack of his enemies, he may
have succeeded in killing some, but this hardly helps him—the wounds and
stabs continue, and his blood flows more and more.
Such is the story which repeated observations, on the part of those best
qualified for making them, have made familiar; nor is there anything
which should cause us to doubt the truth of it, except the interesting
nature and picturesque character of the facts narrated—a very broken
reed for the sceptical naturalist to lean on. He, of course, denies it,
and is not at all impressed by such accounts of eye-witnesses as, for
instance, the following. “One morning,” says Captain Arn, “during a calm
when near the Hebrides, all hands were called up at two a.m. to witness
a battle between several of the fish called threshers or fox-sharks and
some sword-fish, on one side, and an enormous whale on the other. It was
in the middle of the summer; and the weather being clear and the fish
close to the vessel, we had a fine opportunity of witnessing the contest.
As soon as the whale’s back appeared above the water, the threshers,
springing several yards into the air, descended with great violence upon
the object of their rancour, and inflicted upon him the most severe slaps
with their long tails, the sounds of which resembled the reports of
muskets fired at a distance. The sword-fish, in their turn, attacked the
distressed whale, stabbing from below; and thus beset on all sides, and
wounded, when the poor creature appeared the water around him was dyed
with blood. In this manner they continued tormenting and wounding him for
many hours, until we lost sight of him; and I have no doubt they, in the
end, completed his destruction. The master of a fishing-boat has recently
observed that the thresher-shark serves out the whales, the sea sometimes
being all blood. One whale attacked by these fish once took refuge under
his vessel, where it lay an hour and a half without moving a fin. He also
remarked having seen the threshers jump out of the water as high as the
masthead and down upon the whale, while the sword-fish was wounding him
from beneath, the two sorts of fish evidently acting in concert.” As the
fish are here stated to have been close to the vessel, it is difficult to
see how a mistake could have arisen. Various professors, however, deny
the truth, and even the possibility of these things; but the reckless
negations of mere scientists should always be received with extreme
caution, when opposed to the direct personal evidence of British seamen,
as accustomed to scan as to sail the ocean, and in the constant, daily
habit of keeping their weather-eye open.
As before remarked, the thresher is a species of shark, nor can he be
said to be a very large one, since without the tail he would only be
some six or seven feet long, and that part of him, efficient though it
is, is so thin and supple that it adds but little to his bulk. Certainly
one would not expect such a creature to make whales his habitual prey:
nor is this the case, though common observation makes it certain that he
does very often attack them. Usually, however, he feeds upon mackerels,
herrings, and other fish that swim in shoals. These, if scattered, he
drives together by threshing the water with his tail, going round and
about them as does a sheep-dog with its flock, though with a purpose much
less humane. Then, when the sea is thick with a wedged and struggling
mass, he kills quantities at a time by a rain of flail-like blows.
The thresher—or fox-shark, as it is also called—and the sword-fish make,
together, a strange pair of creatures, the one being extraordinarily
elongated at the tail, and the other at the nose. It is curious to
find these two great fishes, developed thus in opposite directions,
if not upon opposite principles, combining against a common object of
attack, each helping the other with a weapon very different from its own.
Of the two, that of the sword-fish is certainly the more deadly when
used against a creature of any size, and since the thresher itself is
doubtless good eating, one almost wonders that it does not occur to its
powerful ally to kill it, rather than the whale. This it could probably
do with impunity, for one thrust would be sufficient, and by striking
from beneath, as it does with the whale, it would stand in no danger
of the thresher’s blows. Moreover, it is one of the swiftest swimmers
of ocean, as might be gathered both from its powerful tail and the
general lines of its body, which is elongated, even if we do not take
the lance-like snout or upper jaw into consideration. The sword-fish,
however, seems to possess a natural instinct for combination, since, on
another occasion, we have seen it leagued with two killers or grampuses,
in an unsuccessful attack on a sperm-whale. Possibly, therefore, it makes
the pursuit of these huge creatures—more particularly of the whalebone
whales, which are less dangerous—a speciality, being, no doubt, induced
to it by the prospect of a rich and enduring banquet, and possibly also
by the mere love of sport.
It is quite a mistake to imagine that animals do not enjoy killing, as
we—that is to say, as some of us—do. On the contrary, every creature
experiences a natural pleasure in doing that which it excels in doing,
and when this excellence consists in any form of destruction, we have
the very type of the sportsman amongst ourselves. Thus many predaceous
animals will always kill more than they can devour, if the opportunity
for their doing so should occur. The stock instance given is the tiger,
but under the requisite conditions it would probably be the same with
all the Felidæ. They evidently find a pleasure in killing their prey,
independent of that which follows when they feast upon its carcass. The
same story is told by all those whose hen-house has suffered through the
depredations of foxes; in fact, numberless instances are to be found of
this love of killing, for its own sake, in animals formed to kill, but
so scattered about in all sorts of books that it would take a long while
to collect a good list of them. Now, the sword-fish is so swift and so
deadly, and the sea is so full of creatures which it could, without any
difficulty, despatch, that I cannot help thinking it is more the pleasure
of repeatedly stabbing the huge whale, and seeing the blood rush out,
which induces it to attack it, than the anticipations of a feast. It is
just the same with the thresher, and I have, myself, very little doubt
that these two go whale-hunting, just as people go elephant-shooting, and
find the same sort of excitement in it. What is curious is that men who
are accustomed to harpoon whales, and never have the smallest sympathy
with them whilst doing so, become quite pitiful when they see them being
killed in this way, and they never seem to think themselves at all like
the sword-fish and threshers. The whale, no doubt, classes them all
together, but it may think the harpooners the worst of the band.
The sword, as it is called, of the sword-fish—though it is more like a
long lance—is formed by the prolongation of the bones of the upper jaw.
It is wedge-shaped, sharp at the end, and sometimes more than half the
whole length of the rest of the creature’s body—a most formidable weapon,
which its owner can drive through the body of a porpoise or shark, or
into the side of a whale, as easily as a lady can stick a knitting-needle
into a ball of worsted. This may seem like an exaggeration, but it cannot
be a very great one, since a sword-fish has been known to run its sword
right through the timbers of a ship, though sheathed with copper, so as
to pierce an oil-cask lying, with others, in the hold. Of course, under
such circumstances, it was unable to withdraw the weapon, which was
broken off, and remained so tightly wedged in the hole it had made, that
neither did any water enter the ship, nor a drop of oil escape from the
oil-cask. In the museum at South Kensington, portions of the hulls of
ships, or of other hard substances, thus pierced, and with the broken
sword lying either in or beside them, are exhibited. Probably, in these
cases, the ship has been mistaken for a whale by the sword-fish, and
such incidents may be looked upon as evidence both of his being able,
as a rule, to distinguish the one from the other, and of his habit of
attacking the whale in this way; for ships are so numerous that were it
by chance merely that such things happened, they would probably happen
more often.
I do not know if there is any record of men having been attacked by
sword-fish, but in natural history books bathers are generally warned
against them, and it is difficult to imagine a more terrific creature
coming to attack one in the water. A man may kill a shark even under
these circumstances, and there are even negroes who are said to be expert
in doing so. As the shark turns upon his back they dive underneath him,
and then, as he turns over again, they stab him with a long knife in the
belly, ripping him up. But then the shark is slow, and he has to pause
and turn over before he strikes, which gives a man who is expert and
keeps his presence of mind, a chance to strike at him first. The shark
comes near the man—near him with its whole body, that is to say—but the
sword-fish would not. His sword projects three feet in front of him, and
so he would be three feet away, so to speak, when he first pricked the
man with it. Only after he had been run right through would the man get
to proper striking distance, and then it would be too late. Nor would
there be any avoiding that sword-thrust—the sword-fish is so very swift,
and comes with such a tremendous rush.
The sword-fish may attain a length of from twelve to sixteen feet,
and is then a most formidable monster, to be feared by almost every
inhabitant of the ocean, from the whale downwards. But a still more
terrible, because a more cruel monster, is the saw-fish, a creature
that grows to an even larger size, and carries, as his name implies, a
saw, instead of a sword, in front of him. This terrific implement may
be as much as two yards in length—just double the length of the other.
It is flat and broad, narrowing slowly towards the point; and all the
way down, upon each side, it is set with sharp quadrangular teeth,
each one being firmly fixed in a socket. The creature’s real teeth are
small and weak, so that it is difficult for him to eat hard, firm flesh.
He prefers intestines, which are softer, and by means of his saw he is
able to procure them. This he does by sinking beneath some unfortunate
porpoise or dolphin—perhaps even a shark or a whale—and striking violent
lateral blows at its belly; not spearing it with the keen, clean thrust
of the sword-fish, but ripping it from side to side. In this way it tears
out the entrails of its victim, and then greedily devours them as they
float in the water. A more horrible thing can hardly be imagined. There
is only this to be said, that the creatures thus cruelly used are as
cruel themselves in pursuing and devouring their own prey—or, at least,
they are as cruel as they can be. Whether that is a very consolatory
reflection I really don’t know, but I can think of no better one. In the
sea, even more than upon land, every creature lives by killing and eating
other creatures. There are no gentle scenes, or, at least, not many; it
is all a carnage. The most peaceable and innocent creatures—the ones that
we can think about with most pleasure—are the great toothless whales,
for these, though so gigantic, have a gullet too small for a fish of any
size to pass down it, and live, for the most part, on infusoria, which
are creatures so minute, and so low in the scale of life, that they may
almost be looked upon as belonging to the vegetable kingdom.
The whales, indeed, with their great jaws, in which, in a leisurely
way, they enclose hosts of creatures so widely distributed, yet at
the same time so minute, that they make, as it were, a part of the
water, in which they are often only distinguishable by the colour their
numbers impart to it, may be said to browse the sea, as oxen and horses
browse the fields. Yet these poor, peaceful giants are persecuted, as
we have seen, by packs of ravenous creatures against whom their very
size makes them almost defenceless. As for the toothed whales, some
of them—as, for instance, the killer or grampus—are amongst the most
voracious of the dwellers of the sea, so that, from the great cachalot
down to the smallest fish, mollusc, or crustacean, it may be said that
all marine nature is at fierce, carnivorous war. This war, too, is, for
the most part, cannibalistic in its nature, and this cannibalism is of a
peculiarly horrid description, since most fish devour numbers of their
own offspring, for which, by the laws of nature, they feel no affection,
and which they do not even know.
In these latter practices, indeed, the cetaceans, being mammals and very
tender parents, do not participate; but there is another honourable
exception, and that where we might least of all expect to find it. The
sharks, so justly dreaded for their voracity, to which, as is well known,
man himself not infrequently falls a victim, are solicitous of their
young, with whom, to the number of a dozen or more, the mother swims
about and does her best to provide them with food. The pretty little
flock gambol and frolic about her, and should anything alarm them,
they dart at once into her great mouth, held open to receive them, and
disappear down her throat. There they remain till their mother thinks
the danger is over, when she opens her mouth again, and they re-emerge.
This privilege—and it must sometimes be a valuable one—is also open to
the pretty little pilot-fishes which, to the number sometimes of half a
dozen, accompany the shark in all its wanderings, and which everybody has
read about.
It is generally said in natural history books, that the relations
existing between the shark and the pilot-fish are not quite understood:
but since it must be an inestimable privilege to a little weakly fishlet
that any large fish might snap up, to have a shark for a protector, and
a shark-cavern to go into—not in the way that other creatures go into
it—and since there is nothing which the shark eats that his friend may
not have a share of, if he wants to, I really do not see what more one
need understand, as far, at least, as the pilot-fish is concerned. Then,
too, if—as there seems little doubt is the case—the pilot-fish acts as
a scout for the shark, and brings him to anything eatable that he may
find floating about in the sea, this fully explains the part which the
shark plays in this little amicable arrangement. He protects his little
guide and purveyor, not only by his presence but also by offering him
an asylum, and the habit of seeking such an asylum has, no doubt, been
acquired by the pilot-fish through his seeing the young sharks do so. He
has lived in the nursery with them, and they have taught him the trick.
Of course, as the pilot-fish shares in anything the shark gets, his wish
to guide the latter to whatever he may be the first to find, as well
as the trouble he takes to find it, is easily explained. It is not an
unselfish act, but one in his own interests, and thus all the requisites
of an association of this sort, between two different species of animals,
are fulfilled.[13]
When a shark is caught at sea, the poor little pilot-fish, as he is
hauled up on deck, will leap up after him out of the water, in a vain
endeavour to follow his life’s companion. It is no use; he falls back
again, the blue and golden bands with which his bright little body is
decorated glittering in the sun—for there generally is a sun in the
regions where these things take place. This certainly looks as though
the pilot-fish were genuinely attached to the shark. It seems like the
act of a faithful little friend, but it need imply no more than does his
habitual following and keeping company with the shark in the sea. To
be with the great fish has become an instinct with the little one, and
so when the latter sees his convoy going somewhere where he has never
gone before, he endeavours to go with him. Still, that a really friendly
feeling may, through long association, have arisen between the two
companions, though differing so from one another in size and appearance,
does not seem impossible, or even unlikely. Of course, in considering a
question of this sort, we should first get clear ideas of what friendship
really is—the essential elements of which it consists. To do this is
not, perhaps, so easy a matter as it may seem. At any rate, it is too
difficult to be attempted in a work like this.
I make all these statements in regard to the relations existing between
the shark and the pilot-fish, and between the mother shark and her young,
upon the authority of Mr. Bullen, author of two interesting works,
_The Cruise of the Cachalot_ and _Idylls of the Sea_. In regard to the
reception by the shark into her stomach—or, at least, down her throat—of
both her young and the pilot-fish, this certainly does seem surprising,
but as Mr. Bullen was, on various occasions, present when a shark was
cut open and her family and retainers found inside her, the fact seems
established. He writes, too—so I gather—as an eye-witness of the habit
_au naturel_. I do not know, therefore, why there should be no reference
to it in works that are supposed to instruct, except that, as a rule,
the scientific naturalist has but two lines of conduct in regard to the
more picturesque doings of any animal. First, he denies what is not in
accordance with his ideas and non-experience, and then he refuses to say
anything about such things—cuts them, as it were, even after they have
been properly introduced to him, and their respectability vouched for.
If he had a third line he might, in time, frankly describe them, but
generally he has only those two.