20 Autobiography of a Sperm Whale 



promptings to strike out a way of my own, but one 

 glance at him quenched all such aspirations and made 

 me feel how good it was to be permitted to follow so 

 great a guide. 



Very pleasantly passed a space of six days and 

 then a whole wide area of new pleasures met my 

 delighted senses. Whither we were bound I did not 

 know, but now I can tell you that we made the Bab-el- 

 Mandeb, no gate of tears to me, but a veritable portal 

 of joy. During that short passage, so rich in life are 

 the tepid Indian Seas, even my small body had become 

 quite encrusted with parasitical growths, barnacles 

 and moss and tiny limpets. They worried my tender 

 skin, they fretted me beyond bearing, and so, when 

 I saw the jagged surfaces of coral at the gate of the 

 Red Sea, I rushed, as did my fellows, to chafe my 

 irritated body along those gratefully corrugated 

 summits of the edifices below. Ah ! another joy ; 

 to drag oneself luxuriously over those myriad needle- 

 points of coral, every touch sending a thrill of delight 

 from fluke-edge to spiracle — yes, indeed, it was worth 

 all the miserable days of annoyance preceding it to 

 know the sweetness of the relief. 



And then the food. Here was found in fullest 

 abundance all that the sea had to offer us. Massy 

 shoals of lazy fish that, needing no inducement, just 

 swam serenely down the gaping caverns of our jaws, 

 cuttles of medium size but soft and sapid, that without 

 any attempt at resistance allowed themselves to drift 

 gelatinous] y into the warm haven of our stomachs. 

 Ah ! the Red Sea is a good place. Yet one serious 

 drawback we all found. By reason of our bulk (I may 

 say 'our ' now I have attained perhaps the niaximum 

 size allotted to the Sperm Whale) we were often com- 

 pelled to give the shallow shores a wide berth. But 



