His CAPTORS. 159 



Bailing the Brain. Banquet for Birds and Sharks. 



alone (it turned out sixteen), and ninety or nine- 

 ty-five barrels of oil in all. The sea has been all 

 white on that side the ship with the spermaceti 

 and blubber that have escaped. Thousands of 

 albatrosses, gulls, and haglets have more than 

 got their fill, so that they fly heavily and with 

 difficulty, and will probably have to spend three 

 or four days, if not weeks, in digestion, like the 

 sloth. Sperm whalers are provided with large 

 scoops, by which, in good weather, they save a 

 great deal of what we are losing, some of the 

 boys being out in a boat to dip it up. 



The boat-steer ers have been down upon the 

 carcass four times to secure hooks and haw- 

 sers into the great holes they cut in the blubber 

 from above. Eight or ten sharks are prowling 

 round, of the picked-nose kind, some of them 

 eight and nine feet long. They will come right 

 up on to the whale's body with a wave, bite out 

 great pieces of flesh, turn over on to their bellies, 

 and roll off. Several of them have been har- 

 pooned, and two have gone off with irons in 

 their backs, that do not seem to annoy them 

 any more than a little splinter in the thumb of 

 a wood sawyer. 



The tenacity with which the shark holds to 



