SPERM WHALES 203 



its capability of throwing itself out of the water. 

 Mr. Aflalo relates the circumstance of having seen 



O 



an individual hurl itself out three or four times 



running. 



This great strength is sometimes disastrous to the 

 whale fishers. " It has been the general belief," 



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remarks Captain Scammon, " that the Sperm whale 

 is excessively timid ; but if this is its general character 

 there are many exceptions among the larger males, 

 for when attacked they have in repeated instances 

 turned upon their pursuers in the most defiant 

 manner, and their own disfigured jaws, which are 

 their principal weapons of defence, prove that they 

 either engage in desperate contentions with their 

 kind, or with some unknown leviathan inhabiting the 

 deep. Moreover, it is we believe a well-established 

 fact that ships have been sunk by the deliberate 

 assaults of vicious, grey-headed, old Cachalots." 



Captain Scammon gives several instances of such 

 assaults. The creatures butt at the vessel with their 

 massive forehead, and have been known to stave 

 a vessel in ; but it does not always seem clear 

 whether this is accidental or due to mere confusion 

 on the part of the whale, or is a deliberate attack. 

 But there is one instance related where the whale 



' Marco Polo (Travels of Marco Polo, Yule) explained such events 

 otherwise: "for when the ship in her course by night sends a ripple 

 back alongside of the whale, the creature seeing the foam fancies 

 there is something to eat afloat and makes a rush forward, whereby it 

 often shall stave in some part of the ship." Mr. Bullen, in his recently- 

 published Cruise of the Cachalot, figures a Sperm whale about to bite 

 a boat in two ; it has turned over on its back for the purpose. 



