Fighting the Whales

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER SIX.

  THE WHALE--FIGHTING BULLS, ETCETERA.

  As the reader may, perhaps, have been asking a few questions about thewhale in his own mind, I shall try to answer them, by telling a fewthings concerning that creature which, I think, are worth knowing.

  In the first place, the whale is not a fish! I have applied that nameto it, no doubt, because it is the custom to do so; but there are greatdifferences between the whales and the fishes. The mere fact that thewhale lives in water is not sufficient to prove it to be a fish. Thefrog lives very much in water--he is born in the water, and, when veryyoung, he lives in it altogether--would die, in fact, if he were takenout of it; yet a frog is not a fish.

  The following are some of the differences existing between a whale and afish:--

  The whale is a warm-blooded animal; the fish is cold-blooded. The whalebrings forth its young alive; while most fishes lay eggs or spawn.Moreover, the fish lives entirely under water, but the whale cannot doso. He breathes air through enormous lungs, not gills. If you were tohold a whale's head under water for much longer than an hour, it wouldcertainly be drowned; and this is the reason why it comes so frequentlyto the surface of the sea to take breath. Whales seldom stay more thanan hour under water, and when they come up to breathe, they dischargethe last breath they took through their nostrils or blow-holes, mixedwith large quantities of water, which they have taken in while feeding.But the most remarkable point of difference between the whale and fishesof all kinds is, that it suckles its young.

  The calf of one kind of whale is about fourteen feet long when it isborn, and it weighs about a ton. The cow-whale usually has only onecalf at a time, and the manner in which she behaves to her gigantic babyshows that she is affected by feelings of anxiety and affection such asare never seen in fishes, which heartless creatures forsake their eggswhen they are laid, and I am pretty sure they would not know their ownchildren if they happened to meet with them.

  The whale, on the contrary, takes care of her little one, gives it suck,and sports playfully with it in the waves; its enormous heart throbbingall the while, no doubt, with satisfaction.

  I have heard of a whale which was once driven into shoal water with itscalf and nearly stranded. The huge dam seemed to become anxious for thesafety of her child, for she was seen to swim eagerly round it, embraceit with her fins, and roll it over in the waves, trying to make itfollow her into deep water. But the calf was obstinate; it would notgo, and the result was that the boat of a whaler pulled up and harpoonedit. The poor little whale darted away like lightning on receiving theterrible iron, and ran out a hundred fathoms of line; but it was soonoverhauled and killed. All this time the dam kept close to the side ofits calf, and not until a harpoon was plunged into her own side wouldshe move away. Two boats were after her. With a single rap of her tailshe cut one of the boats in two, and then darted off. But in a shorttime she turned and came back. Her feelings of anxiety had returned, nodoubt, after the first sting of pain was over, and she died at last,close to the side of her young one.

  There are various kinds of whales, but the two sorts that are mostsought after are the common whale of the Greenland Seas, which is calledthe "right whale," and the sperm whale of the South Sea. Both kinds arefound in the south; but the sperm whale never goes to the North Seas.Both kinds grow to an enormous size--sometimes to seventy feet inlength, but there is considerable difference in their appearance,especially about the head. In a former chapter I have partly describedthe head of a _right_ whale, which has whalebone instead of teeth, withits blow-holes on the back of the head. The sperm whale has large whiteteeth in its lower-jaw and none at all in the upper. It has only oneblow-hole, and that a little one, much farther forward on its head, sothat sailors can tell, at a great distance, what kind of whales theysee, simply by their manner of spouting.

  The most remarkable feature about the sperm whale is the bluntness ofits clumsy head, which looks somewhat like a big log with the end sawnsquare off, and this head is about one-third of its entire body.

  The sperm whale feeds differently from the right whale. He seizes hisprey with his powerful teeth, and lives, to a great extent, on largecuttlefish. Some of them have been seen to vomit lumps of thesecuttlefish as long as a whale-boat. He is much fiercer, too, than theright whale, which almost always takes to flight when struck, but thesperm whale will sometimes turn on its foes, and smash their boat with ablow of his blunt head or tail.

  Fighting-whales, as they are called, are not uncommon. These aregenerally old bulls, which have become wise from experience, and givethe whalers great trouble--sometimes carrying away several harpoons andlines. The lower-jaw of one old bull of this kind was found to besixteen feet long, and it had forty-eight teeth, some of them a footlong. A number of scars about his head showed that this fellow had beenin the wars. When two bull-whales take to fighting, their great effortis to catch each other by the lower-jaw, and, when locked together, theystruggle with a degree of fury that cannot be described.

  It is not often that the sperm whale actually attacks a ship; but thereare a few cases of this kind which cannot be doubted. The followingstory is certainly true; and while it shows how powerful a creature thewhale is, it also shows what terrible risk and sufferings the whalemanhas frequently to encounter.

  In the month of August 1819, the American whale-ship _Essex_ sailed fromNantucket for the Pacific Ocean. She was commanded by Captain Pollard.Late in the autumn of the same year, when in latitude 40 degrees of theSouth Pacific, a shoal, or "school," of sperm whales was discovered, andthree boats were immediately lowered and sent in pursuit. The mate'sboat was struck by one of the fish during the chase, and it was foundnecessary to return to the ship to repair damages.

  While the men were employed at this, an enormous whale suddenly rosequite close to the ship. He was going at nearly the same rate with theship--about three miles an hour; and the men, who were good judges ofthe size of whales, thought that it could not have been less thaneighty-five feet long. All at once he ran against the ship, strikingher bows, and causing her to tremble like a leaf. The whale immediatelydived and passed under the ship, and grazed her keel in doing so. Thisevidently hurt his back, for he suddenly rose to the surface about fiftyyards off, and commenced lashing the sea with his tail and fins as ifsuffering great agony. It was truly an awful sight to behold that greatmonster lashing the sea into foam at so short a distance.

  In a short time he seemed to recover, and started off at great speed towindward. Meanwhile the men discovered that the blow received by theship had done her so much damage, that she began to fill and settle downat the bows; so they rigged the pumps as quickly as possible. Whileworking them one of the men cried out--

  "God have mercy! he comes again!"

  This was too true. The whale had turned, and was now bearing down onthem at full speed, leaving a white track of foam behind him. Rushingat the ship like a battering-ram, he hit her fair on the weather bow,and stove it in, after which he dived and disappeared. The horrifiedmen took to their boats at once, and in _ten minutes_ the ship wentdown.

  The condition of the men thus left in three open boats far out upon thesea, without provisions or shelter, was terrible indeed. Some of themperished, and the rest, after suffering the severest hardships, reacheda low island called Ducies, on the 20th of December. It was a meresand-bank, which supplied them only with water and seafowl. Still eventhis was a mercy, for which they had reason to thank God; for in casesof this kind one of the evils that seamen have most cause to dread isthe want of water.

  Three of the men resolved to remain on this sand-bank, for dreary anduninhabited though it was, they preferred to take their chance of beingpicked up by a passing ship rather than run the risks of crossing thewide ocean in open boats, so their companions bade them a sorrowfulfarewell, and left them. But this island is far out of the usual trackof ships. The poor fellows have never since been heard of.

  It was the 27th
of December when the three boats left the sand-bank withthe remainder of the men, and began a voyage of two thousand miles,towards the island of Juan Fernandez. The mate's boat was picked up,about three months after, by the ship _Indian_ of London, with onlythree living men in it. About the same time the captain's boat wasdiscovered, by the _Dauphin_ of Nantucket, with only two men living; andthese unhappy beings had only sustained life by feeding on the flesh oftheir dead comrades. The third boat must have been lost, for it wasnever heard of; and out of the whole crew of twenty men, only fivereturned home to tell their eventful story.

  Before resuming the thread of my narrative, I must not omit to mention,that in the head of the sperm whale there is a large cavity or holecalled the "case," which contains pure oil that does not require to bemelted, but can be bailed at once into casks and stowed away. This isthe valuable spermaceti from which the finest candles are made. Onewhale will sometimes yield fifteen barrels of spermaceti oil from the"case" of its head. A large fish will produce from eighty to ahundred-barrels of oil altogether, sometimes much more; and whenwhalemen converse with each other, about the size of whales, they speakof "eighty-barrel fish," and so on.

  Although I have written much about the fighting powers of the spermwhale, it must not be supposed that whales are by nature fond offighting. On the contrary, the "right" whale is a timid creature, andnever shows fight, except in defence of its young. And the sperm whalegenerally takes to flight when pursued. In fact, most of the accidentsthat happen to whalemen occur when the wounded monster is lashing thewater in blind terror and agony.

  The whale has three bitter enemies, much smaller, but much bolder thanhimself, and of these he is terribly afraid. They are the swordfish,the thrasher, and the killer. The first of these, the swordfish, has astrong straight horn or sword projecting from his snout, with which heboldly attacks and pierces the whale. The thrasher is a strong fish,twenty feet long, and of great weight. Its method of attack is to leapout of the water on the whale's back, and deal it a tremendous blow withits powerful tail.

  The swordfish and thrasher sometimes act together in the attack; thefirst stabbing him below, and the second belabouring him above, whilethe whale, unable, or too frightened, to fight, rushes through thewater, and even leaps its whole gigantic length into the air in itsendeavours to escape. When a whale thus leaps his whole length out ofthe water, the sailors say he "breaches," and breaching is a commonpractice. They seem to do it often for amusement as well as fromterror.

  But the most deadly of the three enemies is the killer. This is itselfa kind of small whale, but it is wonderfully strong, swift, and bold.When one of the killers gets into the middle, of a school of whales, thefrightened creatures are seen flying in all directions. His mode ofattack is to seize his big enemy by the jaw, and hold on until he isexhausted and dies.