第22章 GETTING SOUTHWARD(3)

"Clipper-built," my Mentor termed him.He was full seventy feet long, but his greatest diameter would not reach ten feet.His snout was long and pointed, while both top and bottom of his head were nearly flat.When he came up to breathe, which he did out of the top of his head, he showed us that, instead of teeth, he had a narrow fringe of baleen (whalebone) all around his upper jaws, although "I kaint see whyfor, kase he lib on all sort er fish, s'long's dey ain't too big.I serpose w'en he kaint get nary fish he do de same ez de 'bowhead'--go er siftin eout dem little tings we calls whale-feed wiv dat ar' rangement he carry in his mouf." "But why don't we harpoon him?" I asked.Goliath turned on me a pitying look, as he replied, "Sonny, ef yew wuz ter go on stick iron inter dat ar fish, yew'd fink de hole bottom fell eout kerblunk.W'en I uz young 'n foolish, a finback range 'longside me one day, off de Seychelles.I just done gone miss'

a spam whale, and I was kiender mad,--muss ha' bin.Wall, I let him hab it blam 'tween de ribs.If I lib ten tousan year, ain't gwine ter fergit dat ar.Wa'nt no time ter spit, tell ye;eberybody hang ober de side ob de boat.Wiz--poof!--de line all gone.Clar to glory, I neber see it go.Ef it hab ketch anywhar, nobody eber see US too.Fus, I t'ought I jump ober de side--neber face de skipper any mo'.But he uz er good ole man, en he only say, 'Don't be sech blame jackass any more.' En Idon't." From which lucid narration I gathered that the finback had himself to thank for his immunity from pursuit."'Sides,"persisted Goliath, "wa' yew gwine do wiv' him? Ain't six inch uv blubber anywhere 'bout his long ugly carkiss; en dat, dirty lill' rag 'er whalebone he got in his mouf, 'taint worf fifty cents.En mor'n dat, we pick up, a dead one when I uz in de ole RAINBOW--done choke hisself, I spec, en we cut him in.He stink fit ter pison de debbil, en, after all, we get eighteen bar'l ob dirty oil out ob him.Wa'nt worf de clean sparm scrap we use ter bile him.G' 'way!" Which emphatic adjuration, addressed not to me, but to the unconscious monster below, closed the lesson for the time.

The calm still persisted, and, as usual, fish began to abound, especially flying-fish.At times, disturbed by some hungry bonito or dolphin, a shoal of them would rise--a great wave of silver--and skim through the air, rising and falling for perhaps a couple of hundred yards before they again took to the water; or a solitary one of larger size than usual would suddenly soar into the air, a heavy splash behind him showing by how few inches he had missed the jaws of his pursuer.Away he would go in a long, long curve, and, meeting the ship in his flight, would rise in the air, turn off at right angles to his former direction, and spin away again, the whir of his wing-fins distinctly visible as well as audible.At last he would incline to the water, but just as he was about to enter it there would be an eddy--the enemy was there waiting--and he would rise twenty, thirty feet, almost perpendicularly, and dart away fully a hundred yards on a fresh course before the drying of his wing membranes compelled him to drop.In the face of such a sight as this, which is of everyday occurrence in these latitudes, how trivial and misleading the statements made by the natural history books seem.

They tell their readers that the EXOCETUS VOLITANS "does not fly;does not flutter its wings; can only take a prolonged leap," and so on.The misfortune attendant upon such books seems, to an unlearned sailor like myself, to be that, although posing as authorities, most of the authors are content to take their facts not simply at second-hand, but even unto twenty-second-hand.So the old fables get repeated, and brought up to date, and it is nobody's business to take the trouble to correct them.