His CAPTORS. 155 



Scars from the Wars. Battering Ram of the Head. 



very large scars on the outside of the jaw, and 

 sundry other marks upon his person, that show 

 him to have been in the wars. All these things, 

 and the way in which he slued his flukes when- 

 ever the boat came near, were thought by his 

 captors to prove him an old cruiser in these 

 seas, and to have known a whale-boat, and, not 

 unlikely, to have had a taste of cold iron before. 

 It would seem, indeed, as if there could be very 

 few sperm whales in the ocean of age, that have 

 not been some time or other chased by a whaler, 

 and their numbers are getting so greatly re- 

 duced that the sperm whale-fishing alone will 

 not be much longer attempted. 



What goes under the name of the sperm 

 whale's head is nearly one third of the mon- 

 ster's length. It is customary to sever this en- 

 tirely at first, and let it tow astern, while the 

 rest of the carcass is being stripped of its very 

 valuable blubber. Utterly unlike the right 

 whale, which has no teeth, the head of a sperm 

 whale is square, the end of it something like 

 the largest mill-log ever seen, sawed off straight. 

 It is truly a prodigious mass of organized, com- 

 pact matter, with which this animal has been 

 known sometimes to butt like a ram against 



