In 1872 the sperm whale had almost disappeared from the Atlantic Ocean, and old whalemen thought that he was doomed to practical extinction. For twenty years or more sperm-whaling voyages had been lengthened to an average of nearly four years, and it had been necessary to hunt him over all the tropic and temperate seas of the world. I had reason to believe that Captain Nelson had not really expected to find any whales on the Hatteras grounds, and I know that he expected to find none on the Western grounds. Besides, it was late in the season by the time we reached the Western grounds, and it was likely that the whales would have disappeared, if they had been there at all. The mastheads were kept manned, however, as they were pretty generally.

We were rolling along easily in a light westerly breeze when Alexander, a Kanaka from Mr. Tilton’s boat, sounded his falsetto cry from the foremasthead. It was early in the forenoon, and I was busy below; but I heard the quick patter of feet on deck, and I knew what it meant. So I dropped every­thing just where I stood, and ran up. I happened to see the spout at once, a beautiful, light, feathery thing in the bright sunlight, more like the drooping ostrich plume than ever. There was but the one spout, repeated lazily at intervals, although the others of the pod, if there were others, might have sounded, and be feeding. The volume of the spout and the force with which it was expelled, as well as the interval between spouts, indicated a full-grown bull.

The whale had been sighted off the port bow, and was now nearly abeam of us, going slowly to the westward, and making a course which took him nearer to the ship as he went on. Mr. Brown was already away, with the light westerly breeze abeam, to head him off. Mr. Wallet, as usual, was some minutes longer in getting his sail up, and in getting under way. He headed still more to the westward. We began to wear ship, and to change our course to follow them.

The boats went on, getting nearer the course of the whale, which continued to swim with great deliberation. He seemed to be bent upon getting nowhere in particular, and likely to achieve his purpose. By the time the ship had got on her new course Mr. Brown had already taken in his sail and got his mast down, and the men were paddling until the whale should discover them. Mr. Wallet should have done the same thing. He was near enough; but he delayed, as he did invariably, a little too long. Just after he had given the order, and while his men were busy with the mast,—they had made a little more noise than necessary, perhaps,—the whale saw them, no doubt imperfectly. He hesitated for an instant, then raised his flukes and lobtailed, the blow on the water making a noise which sounded, to us on the ship, like the report of a big gun, and raised a cataract of spray and green water. This drenched the men in Mr. Brown’s boat, who had paddled up on him from behind and were trying to get into position to sink their irons just behind the side fin. Wright was standing in the bow, a harpoon in his hands, and the boat was just even with the flukes. I saw the men suddenly give way hard—they had no time to change to their oars; then the whale started for Mr. Wallet’s boat, and Wright let go both his irons, getting both fast, but well back toward the small instead of near the side fin, where he had hoped to place them.

The sting of the irons only served to make him the more furious and bent upon destruction, and he rushed full-tilt upon Mr. Wallet. Mr. Brown dropped back, the men put aside their paddles, and I saw two or three turns taken about the loggerhead. Then Wright came aft; and Mr. Brown took his place in the bow, with a lance in his hand. A thin wreath of blue smoke rose from the loggerhead, although they were throwing water upon the line. Wright took another turn, and the boat plunged wildly through the sea after the whale.

The whale seemed to be annoyed by the drag of the boat all on one side of him. I thought I saw him gnash his jaws, although they were kicking up such a fuss that I could not be sure. The ship was less than half a mile away, and the ship and the whale were slowly working nearer each other. It must have been the drag of the boat which caused the whale to miss Mr. Wallet’s boat, which he did by a very narrow margin, coming up for the attack about an oar’s length from the starboard side, and abeam. That seemed to put him beside himself with fury, and he turned at once upon Mr. Brown, shaking his head and gnashing his jaws. As he turned, George Hall saw his chance and planted his irons deep in his other side. If Mr. Wallet had been of the quality of Hall or of some others of his men, he would have done uniformly better.

Hall’s irons served to confuse the whale a little, although not to shake his purpose of destroying Mr. Brown’s boat. He hesitated for an instant, but immediately went on, and disappeared a short distance from the boat. He had not sounded, however, which could be told from the way Mr. Wallet’s line was going out. Hall had changed places with Mr. Wallet, and had three or four turns around the loggerhead, although not enough to check the line entirely. I saw the men in Mr. Brown’s boat back water as hard as they could, and the next instant the whale’s huge head shot out of the water just ahead of the boat, the jaws gnashing. The lower jaw seemed to be crumpled up at the tip. He just missed the boat completely, but got the whale line between his jaws, and chewed it, getting a tooth through it, as I found out later, and fraying the line badly.

He came up out of the water so far that his side fin showed, and the ends of Hall’s harpoons, and Mr. Brown seized that moment to lance him. He got in two thrusts with the lance, and when he withdrew it, its shank was bent almost at right angles. He did not stop to straighten it, but seized another, which, however, he had no chance to use.

As the whale went on, Mr. Brown’s line slipped off his tooth. The teeth of the sperm whale are roughly conical in shape, and curved slightly backward, with a considerable space between them; and there are no teeth in the upper jaw. This will account for the fact that the line was not bitten in two at once. The lines were crossed, too, for Wright’s harpoons were in the left side of the whale, while the boat from which they had come was now on his right side; and Mr. Wallet’s boat had been on his right side when Hall planted his irons, but was now behind him and well to his left. Both lines had slipped over his back. Mr. Brown’s men had been unable to take in the slack of their line as fast as the whale had come, and by some mischance the whale had got a turn around his jaw. By a further mischance, the whale turned again in the same direction, twisting the lines over his back, and going over Mr. Wallet’s line this time. He was pretty well tangled in the lines, and Mr. Wallet’s was wrapped about his body once. Mr. Brown’s men were heaving in on their line as fast as they could, and when, in the whale’s frantic career, it suddenly came taut, it gripped his jaw like an Indian halter. This seemed to throw him into a frenzy. He stopped, lobtailed several times, as rapidly as such a huge mechanism can, lashing the water into foam, and caught sight of the ship, not a quarter of a mile away. Before either of the boats could haul up on him, he had started for her at full speed. Mr. Brown’s line parted at the frayed spot; and before the whale had gone very far, Mr. Wallet reached down to the hatchet at his knees, raised it above his head, and cut.

What impelled Mr. Wallet to cut I do not know. Very probably he was simply afraid—panic-struck; although cutting loose from a fighting whale, vicious and frenzied, and bent upon the destruction of the boats, is perhaps not uncommon. But this whale, although vicious and frenzied, had done no harm to the boats, so far, and cutting did not seem justified. It seemed even less justified to the officers and men than it did to me. As Peter told me, in confidence, he thought there must be something wrong with that whale’s sight or sense of direction, for he had missed his aim every time; missed by a little, but he had missed. It was not necessary for him to say what he thought of our second mate for cutting. I knew well enough.

The whale’s very obvious intention was to ram us, and we knew what the consequences might be. The wheel was thrown hard over, and two of the officers ran below. I have said that the old Clearchus was slow in minding her helm, but she never seemed so slow as she did on that occasion. Mr. Tilton and Mr. Baker had taken the two bomb guns, which the men had brought up from below, before the ship had changed her course five degrees. She went a little faster after that, but her course was not changed many degrees when the whale was upon us. The two bomb lances were fired over the quarter when he was less than half a dozen fathoms away. They must have made a tremendous commotion in the interior of the whale, for I could see him shiver, but he did not stop swimming immediately, although there was no power in his movements. He came on, and struck the ship a glancing blow on the quarter which shook her from keel to trucks, and I thought the fore­top­gal­lant­mast would come down. The Admiral, up there in the hoops, was shaken about like a pea in a box.

After the blow, the whale stopped swimming, and rested quietly just astern of the ship—except for his shivering. It was then that Peter remarked to me on his defective sight, and observed further that if he had had a grain of sense, he would have taken the chance of Mr. Wallet’s cutting to get clean away, which he might have done perfectly well. Then Mr. Baker, thinking to put a quick end to him, I suppose, fired another bomb lance into him. This had just the opposite effect. The whale stirred—no doubt he would have roared if that were customary with whales—and turned, and made for the boats.

He missed again, but passed between them with open jaws, so close to Mr. Wallet’s boat that he gathered in and crushed to splinters both oars on the port side, and almost swamped the boat with the wave he made. Mr. Brown was a little astern of Mr. Wallet, and as the whale passed him, he gave a deep thrust with the lance. He had no time to withdraw it, although he tried to, and bent the shank of the lance in his attempt.

That was not the end of misfortune. The frayed end of line from Mr. Brown’s boat was not completely hauled in, and there were some fathoms still hanging down from the bow. The whale caught this frayed end between his jaws as he passed, and worried it as a terrier does a string. The effect was the same as if it had still been fast to the iron in his body. The line tautened instantly, and whirled the bow around, and then, as no attention was being given to the loggerhead end of a frayed line with a few fathoms over the bow, it began to snake out of its tub. I do not know how it happened—nobody knew—but Wright somehow got a kink in the line around his leg, and was snaked the length of the boat, kicking three men in the head on his meteoric course and out at the bow. Mr. Brown and Wright had been in the habit of doing without the kicking-strap. I have explained the kicking-strap. It is a piece of heavy line which extends loosely along the top of the clumsy cleat, and has its ends knotted under. The whale line passes under it on its way to the groove in the stem. There was nothing, therefore, to stop Wright except the frail peg in the stem, and breaking the peg was nothing to him. He disappeared overboard.

Everybody in the boat had given him up when, suddenly, the line went slack, and Wright shot to the surface. He had somehow managed to whip out his knife and cut the line. They got him aboard the boat at once. It was very nearly the end of poor Wright. He was in great pain and almost done, his hip dislocated, although no bones were broken.

That was about the end of the whale. He went on for a little way, enveloped by the twisting lines. Then he stopped, shivered once more, and went into his flurry, spouting thick, black blood. That flurry, as I think of it now, could not have been pleasant to see, but I do not remember that it aroused any disgust in me at the time. It was not far from the ship, and I can only recollect a consuming curiosity, on my part, to see him die, and how he did it. It could not have differed very much, except in the size of the beast, from the scenes at John Green’s slaughter-house.

When the whale was alongside, and the cutting-in was under way, we found that one eye was sightless and almost gone. This may have been due to fighting, as the twisted jaw was supposed to be due to that cause. I examined the jaw carefully when it was on deck, as did most of the crew. The tip of the jaw was bent sidewise, about two feet of it. It was a mystery to me, and ever since has remained a mystery, how the jawbone of a full-grown whale could be so bent. I could understand how it might be broken, but to be bent as this was, or to be curled around in a spiral, as was the case in our later specimen, it seemed to me that it would have had to be done while the whale was young, and the bone soft and cartilaginous. I could not imagine whales of that tender age fighting fiercely enough to bend a jaw or put out an eye, and I should be convinced—as to the bending of the jaw—only by actually seeing the jaw of a whale bent in a fight with another whale. It might be sufficient if I heard of such an occurrence from a man in whose powers of observation and in whose veracity I had absolute confidence; but who would believe the yarn of the average whaleman? Whalemen are notoriously inaccurate observers, anyway.

This whale was an old one, rather old for a whale, although by no means decrepit. What that means in years of life I do not know. The natural life of a whale, barring accidents, would be expected to be of the same order as the life of an elephant, which is popularly believed to live to a great age, from one hundred to three hundred years. I should think that a whale three hundred years old would yield little oil; and this whale of ours made nearly sixty barrels.

Poor Wright! We had no surgeon, of course, better than the captain and Mr. Wallet. Wallet was a whale-surgeon. Wright was in great pain for over a week, until we got into Fayal, and his thigh swelled to great size. I used to hear him groaning at night in a subdued fashion.