146 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



lary of whaling with a number of picturesque terms. Among 

 these was the "glip," the name applied to a portion of oil 

 emitted just before going below the surface. The whalemen 

 believed that there was some mysterious connection between 

 the "glip" and the whale, for when any object crossed over the 

 water covered by this oil the cachalot became "gallied," or 

 frightened. The whale "settled" when it simply dropped out 

 of sight, almost instantaneously, without changing its horizon- 

 tal position i it "breached" when it rose vertically out of the 

 water with great velocity, often projecting one-half of its 

 length into the airj it was said to be "lobtailing" when it 

 seemed to hang perpendicularly in the water, head downward, 

 and swept a great radius with its tail, or "flukes," striking the 

 water with heavy concussions audible for several miles j and it 

 "sounded" when it first lifted the forward part of the body a 

 few feet out of water, gave a strong spout, and then dipped its 

 nose, rounded its back in a high arch, threw its flukes into the 

 air, and disappeared in a perpendicular descent. 



The sperm whale was preeminently a globe-trotter j and 

 when, as frequently happened, it covered great distances by 

 swimming at a uniform speed, it was said to be "making a pas- 

 sage." The places visited seemed to include all the warmer 

 waters of the world j for in numerous instances harpoons which 

 had been driven in thousands of miles away and often many 

 years before were found imbedded in the flesh or blubber of a 

 dead whale. Since each vessel carefully marked its harpoon 

 irons as a means of identification, circumstances often made it 

 quite possible to ascertain the approximate time and place in 

 which a pursued animal had escaped with one or more of these 

 marks of battle. A plausible motive for such cosmopolitan 

 wanderings, too, lay in the fact that the cachalot's chief food, 

 the squid, was found most plentifully in the cold ocean cur- 

 rents which originated in the frigid zones and thence spread 

 widely over the expanses of the several oceans. Though these 

 long journeys were made by swimming steadily at a moderate 

 pace, the sperm whale was capable of attaining a high rate of 

 speed for shorter distances. Many writers refer to the terrific 

 speed of many individuals just after being struck j and the 

 number of fathoms of whale-line taken out in a given number 



