4 WHALING 



elastic "bone" to bend like a bow — or like six or eight hundred 

 bows — the "brit" sHps down his absurdly tiny throat, and the 

 water filters through the very effective baleen sieve. 



The right whale is not naturally gregarious, although sev- 

 eral may be found feeding together, and in spite of enormous 

 bulk, great strength, and much endurance, he is rather a timid 

 beast. Whalers have often remarked the strong maternal 

 affection shown by right whales, as by other whales, and have 

 told thereof tales better suited to the sentimental 18th and 19th 

 centuries than to the present generation; the mother does 

 guard her single foal, or ''sucker," attentively and defensively 

 for its first year or more. Still, tales of attack by right whales 

 require the reminder that any creature sixty feet long and a 

 hundred tons in weight would be dangerous when frightened 

 or confused. 



They have no voice and, of course, the loud noise made in 

 blowing is simply breathing. They swim slowly, the enormous 

 tail, or ''flukes," — placed horizontally for greater force — sup- 

 plying motive power and steering. Sounding, like any other 

 diving, is, of course, at a higher speed : some seven to nine miles 

 an hour. 



They stay under water, normally, about five or ten minutes 

 and are on the surface about two minutes for breathing. They 

 are longer under water when feeding and probably still longer 

 when frightened, for there are authoritative reports of whales 

 that stayed under even an hour and twenty minutes. 



Among Nantucket and New Bedford whalers, the sperm 

 whale, or cachalot, was considered the real prize of the seas. 

 Though he had no "whalebone," his oil was of much better 

 quaHty and his great "case" of spermaceti, the finest and most 

 valuable whale oil on the market, was ample recompense for the 

 lack of "bone." And his great jaws and big teeth apparently 

 only added to the adventure of whaling. 



The sperm is the largest of the toothed whales, measuring 

 about sixty feet in length, a great clumsy creature with high, 

 blunt, massive head ; short, broad flippers which serve only for 

 balance; a strongly marked "hump"; and the mighty flukes 



