HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN WHALE FISHERY. 127 



poor fellows went down; we saw do sign of them afterward, and the 

 water was so dark, stained with blood, that we could not see into it. 



"As the whale came feeling around with her nose, she passed close by 

 me. I was afraid of the flukes, and got hold of the warp, or iron pole, 

 or her small, or something, and towed a little way till she slacked speed 

 a little. Then I dove under, so as to clear the flukes, and came up 

 astern of them. I was in good time ; for having felt the bofit she turned 

 over and threshed the spot with a number of blows in quick succession, 

 pounding the wreck into splinters. She must have caught sight of me, 

 for she came up on a half breach, and dropped her head on me, and 

 drove me, half stunned, deep under water. Again I came up near the 

 small, and again dove under the flukes. From this time she seemed to 

 keep me in sight. Again and again — the mate told me afterward — she 

 would run her head in the air and fall on my back, bruising and half 

 drowning me as I was driven down in the water. 



" Sometimes I caught hold of the line, or something attached to the 

 mad brute, and would bold until a sweep of the flukes would take 

 my long legs and break my hold. The second mate's boat had cut long 

 ago, and watched her chance to pick up the surviving crew, but had not 

 been able to reach me ; for when the whale's eye caught the boat, she 

 would dash for it so wickedly that the whole crew became demoralized, 

 owing to the loss of the two men, and the sight, to them more terrible 

 than to me perhaps, of the peril the captain was in. To husband my 

 strength, I gave over swimming, and, treading water, I faced the dan- 

 ger, and several times by sinking avoided the blow from her head. As 

 a desperate resource, I strove with my pointed sheath-knife to prick her 

 nose;* I did all a strong man was in duty bound to do to save his life. 

 The cooper, who was ship-keeper, ran down with the ship, intending to 

 cut between the whale and myself, but we were at too close quarters. 

 He was afraid to run me down lest he might tear me with the ragged 

 copper. Thus for three-quarters of an hour that whale and I were fight- 

 ing ; the act of breathing became labored and painful ; my head and 

 shoulders were sore from bruises, and my legs had been pounded by his 

 flukes; but it was not until I found myself swimming with my arms 



* Says Captain Davis : " Had the right whale the habit of jawing back,' as the sperm 

 whale has, it would be next to impossible to secure him by the present weapons and 

 methods of our whalemen. * » * Read Scoresby, Jardin, and Beale, the fathers of 

 whaling literature, and they will not reveal the secret of the weakness of the right 

 whale. Whalemen and naturalists, they have failed to record the important fact, that 

 on the tip of the upper jaw there is a spot of very limited extent, seemingly as sensi- 

 tive in feeling as the antennae of an insect ; as keenly alive to the prick of lance or 

 harpoon as a gentleman's nose is to the tweak of finger and thumb. However swiftly 

 a right whale may be advancing on the boat, a slight prick on this point will arrest 

 his forward motion at once. I think it safe to say that he will not advance a single 

 yard after the prick is given. He will either pitch his head, and round down, like a 

 great wheel turning on a fixed axis, or he will turn shortly to the right or left, accord- 

 ing to the part of the nose which is pricked. Sometimes he will throw his enormous 

 head straight in the air, and settle backward tail first, by this motion exposing his 



