第63章 "BOWHEAD" FISHING(1)

Day and night being now only distinguishable by the aid of the clock, a constant look-out aloft was kept all through the twenty-four hours, watch and watch, but whales were apparently very scarce.We did a good deal of "pelagic" sealing; that is, catching seals swimming.But the total number obtained was not great, for these creatures are only gregarious when at their rocky haunts during the breeding season, or among the ice just before that season begins.Our sealing, therefore, was only a way of passing the time in the absence of nobler game, to be abandoned at once with whales in sight.

It was on the ninth or tenth morning after our arrival on the grounds that a bowhead was raised, And two boats sent after him.

It was my first sight of the great MYSTICETUS, and I must confess to being much impressed by his gigantic bulk.From the difference in shape, he looked much larger than the largest sperm whale we had yet seen, although we had come across some of the very biggest specimens of cachalot.

The contrast between the two animals is most marked, so much so, in fact, that one would hardly credit them with belonging to the same order.Popular ideas of the whale are almost invariably taken from the MYSTICETUS, so that the average individual generally defines a whale as a big fish which spouts water out of the top of his head, and cannot swallow a herring.Indeed, so lately as last year a popular M.P., writing to one of the religious papers, allowed himself to say that "science will not hear of a whale with a gullet capable of admitting anything larger than a man's fist"--a piece of crass ignorance, which is also perpetrated in the appendix to a very widely-distributed edition of the Authorized Version of the Bible.This opinion, strangely enough, is almost universally held, although I trust that the admirable models now being shown in our splendid Natural History Museum at South Kensington will do much to remove it.

Not so many people, perhaps, believe that a whale is a fish, instead of a mammal, but few indeed are the individuals who do not still think that a cetacean possesses a sort of natural fountain on the top of its head, whence, for some recondite reason, it ejects at regular intervals streams of water into the air.

But a whale can no more force water through its spiracle or blow-hole than you or I through our nostrils.It inhales, when at the surface, atmospheric air, and exhales breath like ours, which, coming warm into a cooler medium, becomes visible, as does our breath on a frosty morning.

Now, the MYSTICETUS carries his nostrils on the summit of his head, or crown, the orifice being closed by a beautifully arranged valve when the animal is beneath the water.

Consequently, upon coming to the surface to breathe, he sends up a jet of visible breath into the air some ten or twelve feet.

The cachalot, on the other hand, has the orifice at the point of his square snout, the internal channel running in a slightly diagonal direction downwards, and back through the skull to the lungs.So when he spouts, the breath is projected forward diagonally, and, from some peculiarity which I do not pretend to explain, expends itself in a short, bushy tuft of vapour, very distinct from the tall vertical spout of the bowhead or right whale.

There was little or no wind when we sighted the individual I am now speaking of, so we did not attempt to set sail, but pulled straight for him "head and head." Strange as it may appear, the MYSTICETUS' best point of view is right behind, or "in his wake,"as we say; it is therefore part of the code to approach him from right ahead, in which direction he cannot see at all.Some time before we reached him he became aware of our presence, showing by his uneasy actions that he had his doubts about his personal security.But before he had made up his mind what to do we were upon him, with our harpoons buried in his back.The difference in his behaviour to what we had so long been accustomed to was amazing.He did certainly give a lumbering splash or two with his immense flukes, but no one could possibly have been endangered by them.The water was so shallow that when he sounded it was but for a very few minutes; there was no escape for him that way.As soon as he returned to the surface he set off at his best gait, but that was so slow that we easily hauled up close alongside of him, holding the boats in that position without the slightest attempt to guard ourselves from reprisals on his part, while the officers searched his vitals with the lances as if they were probing a haystack.

Really, the whole affair was so tame that it was impossible to get up any fighting enthusiasm over it; the poor, unwieldy creature died meekly and quietly as an overgrown seal.In less than an hour from the time of leaving the ship we were ready to bring our prize alongside.

Upon coming up to the whale, sail was shortened, and as soon as the fluke-chain was passed we anchored.It was, I heard, our skipper's boast that he could "skin a bowhead in forty minutes;"and although we were certainly longer than that, the celerity with which what seemed a gigantic task was accomplished was marvellous.Of course, it was all plain-sailing, very unlike the complicated and herculean task inevitable at the commencement of cutting-in a sperm whale.

Except for the head work, removing the blubber was effected in precisely the same way as in the case of the cachalot.There was a marked difference between the quantity of lard enveloping this whale and those we had hitherto dealt with.It was nearly double the thickness, besides being much richer in oil, which fairly dripped from it as we hoisted in the blanket-pieces.The upper jaw was removed for its long plates of whalebone or baleen--that valuable substance which alone makes it worth while nowadays to go after the MYSTICETUS, the price obtained for the oil being so low as to make it not worth while to fit out ships to go in search of it alone."Trying-out" the blubber, with its accompaniments, is carried on precisely as with the sperm whale.