138 THE WHALEMAN'S ADVENTURES. 



deal of what we lost, some of the boys being 

 sent out in a boat to dip it up. 



The boat steerers were down upon the car- 

 case four times, to secure hooks and hawsers 

 into the great holes they cut in the blubber 

 from above. Eight or ten sharks were seen 

 prowling round, of the piked-nose kind, some 

 of them eight or nine feet long. They will 

 come right upon the whale's body with a wave, 

 bite out great pieces of flesh, turn over on their 

 bellies, and roll off. Several of them were har- 

 pooned, and two went off with irons in their 

 backs, which seemed as little to annoy them, 

 as a small splinter in the thumb of a wood 

 sawyer. 



The tenacity with which the shark holds to 

 life, or, rather, life to the shark, is astonishing, 

 and hardly to be credited by one who has not 

 himself observed it. We caught a number on 

 this passage for their skin, which, cleansed and 

 dried, is an excellent substitute for sand-paper, 

 and is much used in whale ships to smooth and 

 polish the various things they make up out of 

 whale's bone and teeth. One that we hauled 



