les, towards the island of Juan Fernandez. The mate's boat was
picked up, about three months after, by the ship _Indian_ of London,
with only three living men in it. About the same time the captain's
boat was discovered, by the _Dauphin_ of Nantucket, with only two men
living; and these unhappy beings had only sustained life by feeding on
the flesh of their dead comrades. The third boat must have been lost,
for it was never heard of; and out of the whole crew of twenty men,
only five returned home to tell their eventful story.

Before resuming the thread of my narrative, I must not omit to mention,
that in the head of the sperm whale there is a large cavity or hole
called the "case", which contains pure oil that does not require to be
melted, but can be baled at once into casks and stowed away. This is
the valuable spermaceti from which the finest candles are made. One
whale will sometimes yield fifteen barrels of spermaceti oil from the
"case" of its head. A large fish will produce from eighty to a hundred
barrels of oil altogether, sometimes much more; and when whalemen
converse with each other about the size of whales, they speak of
"eighty-barrel fish", and so on.

Although I have written much about the fighting powers of the sperm
whale, it must not be supposed that whales are by nature fond of
fighting. On the contrary, the "right" whale is a timid creature, and
never shows fight except in defence of its young. And the sperm whale
generally takes to flight when pursued. In fact, most of the accidents
that happen to whalemen occur when the wounded monster is lashing the
water in blind terror and agony.

The whale has three bitter enemies, much smaller, but much bolder than
himself, and of these he is terribly afraid. They are: the swordfish,
the thrasher, and the killer. The first of these, the sword-fish, has
a strong straight horn or sword projecting from his snout, with which
he boldly attacks and pierces the whale. The thrasher is a strong
fish, twenty feet long, and of great weight. Its method of attack is
to leap out of the water on the whale's back, and deal it a tremendous
blow with its powerful tail.

The sword-fish and thrasher sometimes act together in the attack; the
first stabbing him below, and the second belabouring him above, while
the whale, unable, or too frightened to fight, rushes through the
water, and even leaps its whole gigantic length into the air in its
endeavours to escap