en sent to the bottom in
this way.

I remember hearing our first mate tell of a wonderful escape a comrade
of his had in the Greenland Sea Fishery. A whale had been struck, and,
after its first run, they hauled up to it again, and rowed so hard that
they ran the boat right against it. The harpooner was standing on the
bow all ready, and sent his iron cleverly into the blubber. In its
agony the whale reared its tail high out of the water, and the flukes
whirled for a moment like a great fan just above the harpooner's head.
One glance up was enough to show him that certain death was descending.
In an instant he dived over the side and disappeared. Next moment the
flukes came down on the part of the boat he had just left, and cut it
clean off; the other part was driven into the waves, and the men were
left swimming in the water. They were all picked up, however, by
another boat that was in company, and the harpooner was recovered with
the rest. His quick dive had been the saving of his life.

I had not much time given me to study the appearance of this whale
before the order was given to "hoist away!" so we went to work with a
will. The first part that came up was the huge lip, fastened to a
large iron hook, called the blubber hook. It was lowered into the
blubber-room between decks, where a couple of men were stationed to
stow the blubber away. Then came the fins, and after them the upper
jaw, with the whalebone attached to it. The "right" whale has no teeth
like the sperm whale. In place of teeth it has the well-known
substance called whalebone, which grows from the roof of its mouth in a
number of broad thin plates, extending from the back of the head to the
snout. The lower edges of these plates of whalebone are split into
thousands of hairs like bristles, so that the inside roof of a whale's
mouth resembles an enormous blacking brush! The object of this curious
arrangement is to enable the whale to catch the little shrimps and
small sea-blubbers, called "medusa;", on which it feeds. I have spoken
before of these last as being the little creatures that gave out such a
beautiful pale-blue light at night. The whale feeds on them. When he
desires a meal he opens his great mouth and rushes into the midst of a
shoal of medusae; the little things get entangled in thousands among
the hairy ends of the whalebone, and when the monster has got a large
enough mouthful, he shuts his lower jaw and swallows what his