NIKTH DAY.] AMUSEMENTS. 241 



transient gratification to render her miserable, and 

 by making a flaw in an inestimable and brilliant gem, 

 utterly to destroy its value. 



PHTS. You might go on and cite almost all the 

 objects of pursuit of rational beings, as, by distinction, 

 they are called. But to return to your favourite 

 amusement. I wonder that, with such a passion for 

 angling, you have never made an expedition in one 

 of our whalers with Captain Scoresby for instance ; 

 you would then have enjoyed sport of a new kind. 



HAL. I should like much to see a whale taken, 

 but I do not think the sight worth the dangers and 

 privations of such a voyage. It would only be an 

 amusing spectacle and not an enterprise, unless, 

 indeed, I myself employed the harpoon ; and after all 

 it must be a tedious operation, that of watching the 

 sinking and rising of a fish obedient to a natural 

 instinct, which, in this instance, is the cause of his 

 death. 



POIET. How ? 



HAL. The whale, having no air bladder, can sink 

 to the lowest depths of the ocean: and, mistaking 

 the harpoon for the teeth of a sword fish or a shark, 

 he instantly descends, this being his manner of 

 freeing himself from these enemies, who cannot bear 

 the pressure of a deep ocean, and from ascending and 

 descending in small space, he puts himself in the 



