II 



TIT FOR TAT 



IN THE ancient accounts of whales, nearly as much stress was 

 put on the fierceness of the whale as on his hugeness, and 

 appalling are the old copperplate pictures of the whale's attack 

 upon man. At least, they would be appalling if they weren't so 

 comic. Undoubtedly they were intended to appall. But as 

 both first-hand and second-hand knowledge of whales and whal- 

 ing became increasingly common, authors and artists confined 

 themselves more to facts, and pictures of a tusked and horned 

 beast chewing up a ship and all her crew went out of fashion. 



Also, the actual dangers were quite enough in themselves. 

 The right whale is a timid beast and probably never made a 

 genuine attack on man or boat. There are accounts of such at- 

 tacks, to be sure, but there is every reason to believe that the 

 whale was gallied by the prick of the iron. In such a case what 

 damage might not come from those terrific flukes? Whalers 

 early learned, too, the necessity of the man ''with a hatchet 

 in hand to cut the said cord, lest perchance some accident should 

 happen that it were mingled, or that the whale's force should be 

 too violent." There is only one way in which they could have 

 learned it, and the icy waters of Spitzbergen made those experi- 

 ences just so much the more vivid. 



Sperm whaling, however, is quite another proposition. 

 Armed at both ends, the sperm whale puts up more of a fight 

 for his life: his flukes are quite as powerful as those of the right 

 whale and were quite as often used to stave a boat. And it was 

 by no means uncommon for him to turn on his pursuers, open 

 his great jaws and crush a whaleboat to kindlings. The men, 

 strange to say, usually caught hold of bits of wreckage and 

 managed to keep afloat, unmolested by the whale or by sharks, 



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