ead. The
sperm whale has large white teeth in its lower jaw and none at all in
the upper. It has only one blowhole, and that a little one, much
farther forward on its head, so that sailors can tell, at a great
distance, what kind of whales they see simply by their manner of
spouting.

The most remarkable feature about the sperm whale is the bluntness of
its clumsy head, which looks somewhat like a big log with the end sawn
square off, and this head is about one-third of its entire body.

The sperm whale feeds differently from the right whale. He seizes his
prey with his powerful teeth, and lives, to a great extent, on large
cuttle-fish. Some of them have been seen to vomit lumps of these
cuttle-fish as long as a whale-boat. He is much fiercer, too, than the
right whale, which almost always takes to flight when struck, but the
sperm whale will sometimes turn on its foes and smash their boat with a
blow of his blunt head or tail.

Fighting-whales, as they are called, are not uncommon. These are
generally old bulls, which have become wise from experience, and give
the whalers great trouble--sometimes carrying away several harpoons and
lines. The lower jaw of one old bull of this kind was found to be
sixteen feet long, and it had forty-eight teeth, some of them a foot
long. A number of scars about his head showed that this fellow had
been in the wars. When two bull-whales take to fighting, their great
effort is to catch each other by the lower jaw, and, when locked
together, they struggle with a degree of fury that cannot be described.

It is not often that the sperm whale actually attacks a ship; but there
are a few cases of this kind which cannot be doubted. The following
story is certainly true; and while it shows how powerful a creature the
whale is, it also shows what terrible risk and sufferings the whaleman
has frequently to encounter.

In the month of August, 1819, the American whaleship _Essex_ sailed
from Nantucket for the Pacific Ocean. She was commanded by Captain
Pollard. Late in the autumn of the same year, when in latitude 40
degrees of the South Pacific, a shoal, or "school", of sperm whales was
discovered, and three boats were immediately lowered and sent in
pursuit. The mate's boat was struck by one of the fish during the
chase, and it was found necessary to return to the ship to repair
damages.

While the men were employed at this, an enormous whale suddenly rose
quite close to the sh