SEALS AND WHALES OF THE BRITLSH SEAS. 



93 



for no sooner have a sufficient number entered his mouth than the Whale 

 rapidly closes his under jaw, and they are made prisoners, and swallowed. 



The pursuit of the Sperm Whale is attended with much greater danger 

 than that of the Greenland Whale, and Beale gives many instances in which, 

 in his own experience, boats were stove in and men lost ; stories of fighting 

 Whales, he says, are numerous, and probably much exaggerated ; one, known 

 as "Timor Jack," is said to have destroyed ever)' boat sent against him, till 

 at last he was killed by approaching him from several directions at the same 

 time, his attention thus being diverted from the boat which made the successful 

 attack. Another fish, known as " New Zealand Tom," destroyed nine boats 

 successively before breakfast, and when eventually captured, after destroyin"- 

 many other boats, many harpoons from the various ships which had attacked 

 him were found sticking in his body. There is one well-authenticated instance 

 of a vessel being attacked and destroyed by a Sperm Whale : the American 

 whale-ship Essex was attacked by one, which, first passing under the vessel, 

 probably by accident, came in contact with her keel and carried it away : 

 then turning and rushing furiously upon the ship, the Whale stove in her 

 bow ; so serious was the breach that the vessel speedily filled and went down. 

 Most of the crew were away in their boats at the time, but those on board 

 had just time to launch their one remaining boat before the vessel sank. The 

 boats made for the coast of Peru, the nearest land, many hundreds of miles 

 distant ; one of them was picked up drifting at sea, and three of the crew, 

 who were found in it in a state of insensibility, were the only survivors of the 

 ill-fated vessel. 



In addition to the sperm and oil, this species yields another product which 

 is, or was, very valuable, although it is the result of disease, and one would 

 imagine a very uninviting substance — I refer to Ambergris, \.\\t origin and 

 composition of which was so long a puzzle to the learned. This substance is 

 now well known to be a concretion of the indigestible portions of the Ciittle- 



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