of thunder. At the same time, beyond the
vortex, the light boat danced as in triumph
at her victory; and yet her slight frame
trembled and vibrated with each stroke, as
though she shuddered at the havoc she had
caused.

In a short time the struggling ceased: the
whale turned slowly over. We had then
leisure to look about us. The two other
boats were both fast to one fish, and nearly
out of sight to windward. The fourth boat
had struck a whale, but lost him, from the
irons having drawn, and she was now making
towards us. Uniting our strength we took
the prize in tow, and turned our course
towards the ship, eight or nine miles distant.
She was making a long stretch in the direction
of the fast boats. It was afternoon
when, with no better dinner than dry biscuit
and water, and under a burning sun, we fastened
our tow line, and commenced the weary
drag—the hardest, but the most welcome
part of a whaler's labour. With scorched
faces and blistered hands, we pulled steadily
on, lightening our toil with many a chorus,
and making rough calculations of the value
of our prize. It was nightfall when we
reached the ship, and then the whale having
been firmly lashed alongside by strong chains
and hawsers, everything was prepared for
cutting in next morning. Our shipmates
soon followed with their fish, which was
dropped astern, and buoyed with empty casks
to prevent its sinking; for whalers not unfrequently
lose the fruits of their toil by such
an accident. The ship remained hove to all
night, and by daylight we were hard at
work. I could then have a good look at our
prize.

It was a large sperm whale or cachalot,
the most valuable and the most ferocious of
the tribe.

The sperm whale differs considerably, both
in shape and habits, from the common Greenland
whale, and from the " right whale " of
the Pacific. Neither of these has teeth, but
they have, instead of teeth, as is well known,
a certain apparatus for procuring food. In
the " right whale," with which only I have
the pleasure of any actual acquaintance, there
are attached to the whole surface of the roof
of the mouth slabs of black bone, the common
whalebone. These slabs, which are from five
to nine feet long, twelve inches wide in the
broadest part, and half an inch thick, are
ranged parallel to each other on their edges,
with half-inch spaces between them. From
each slab hangs a narrow fringe of hair,
forming a complete network. With its
mouth wide open the whale rushes through
the immense shoals of medusæ that are found
floating in the South Seas; then, closing its
jaws and raising the lips, the water flows out
and the little red creatures ("whale feed,"
sailors call them) are retained by the
fringe. " What a capital shrimp trap! " said
Sir Joseph Banks. The immense tongue,
which sometimes yields six or seven barrels
of oil, lies on the lower jaw. It is of a glossy
white, so that when the capacious mouth is
open, it may be compared fancifully to a
grotesque chamber with a ceiling of hair
cloth and a white satin carpet.

But the sperm whale, of which I have just
described the capture, has not this apparatus.
Its lower jaw contains a formidable row of
more than forty teeth, the jaw itself being
fifteen feet long. Some of these teeth are
nine inches in circumference at the base, and
fit into a groove adapted to them in the
upper jaw. The roof of the mouth is, in the
sperm whale, covered with glistening plates
of a bluish white. These plates are said to
act as a bait to the fishes upon which the
whale feeds, for the cachalot does not confine
himself to shrimps; and, though he usually
dines upon " squid," or cuttle-fish, of which
whole acres are found floating in the Pacific,
yet he does not object to a dolphin or bonito,
and even the wary shark sometimes has the
bad luck to be eaten by the great sea ogre.
Our whale measured fifty-four feet in length.
Of the whole bulk, the head occupied nearly
a third. Round the fins and lips hung
hundreds of barnacles and whale lice, and I
was only deterred from pronouncing our
prize ugly by the fact that he was worth
some six or seven hundred pounds—a
handsome sum.

Our cutting in was not delayed. Tackles
were rove in the massive blocks that hung
from the fore and main-mast heads; others
were suspended from the yards and spans;
and strong purchases were prepared to cant
the whale, so as to get the blubber from his
back and sides. The head was cut off and
dropped astern for a while, until the carcase
was disposed of, though this is an unusual
mode of cutting in, and only practised in
some ships. Strips of blubber, called
"blanket pieces," were cut along the whole
length of the fish. A wooden toggle having
been passed through one end of the strip and a
block hooked to it, the men in-board hoisted
away, those on the whale loosening the mass
with their blubber spades. Other toggles
were inserted to form fresh supports; and
when the blanket piece had been thus hoisted
in, it was passed into the blubber room—a
square apartment under the main hatch.
Some of these blanket pieces will weigh
thirty or forty hundredweight. In the
blubber room they were cut into " horse
pieces " more than a foot square, and piled in
heaps, from which the blood and oil flowed
out in streams. As the strips were cut off,
the whale was canted, or turned, by the
tackles until every morsel of fat had been
stripped from the carcase.

While we were thus occupied, sea birds in
thousands gathered round the ship. The sea
was covered with fatty matter and white
patches of spermaceti, and from beneath us,
shoals of sharks darted up at their dead enemy,