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CHAPTER XIIL 
CHASE AND CAPTURE OF THE SPERM WHALE. 
More exciting and magnificent enterprise cannot be conceived 
than South-Sea fishing .— -Monthly Review on the first Edition. 
Although ancient and modern histories may abound 
in descriptions of man’s daring by “ flood and field/' 
and of the accidents and escapes which accompany his 
voluntary exposure to a multitude of dangers, surely the 
recital of his doings in the chase and capture of the 
leviathan of the deep— the great sperm whale -—can be 
second to none in the interest it must excite in every 
contemplative mind. It is not in the field, jungle, or 
thick forest, that these hardy adventurers seek their 
prey, upon man’s natural element, — and where, should 
any untoward accident occur, assistance of some kind 
can be readily obtained*— but on the vast ocean, at times 
thousands of miles distant from any habitable land, 
where he is not only exposed to the dangers which beset 
him in his adventures with the monster of the deep, but 
to others still more terrible, in which the ruthless tem- 
pest of the China and Japanese seas form no inconsi- 
derable share ; or when near lands, distant and barba- 
rous, as far as the antipodes, dangerous reefs, sunken 
