a favourable opportunity. I found him
very gracious and communicative, and I got such a lecture on the natural
history of the cetacea as I have never forgotten--the outcome of a
quarter-century's experience of them, and afterwards proved by me to be
correct in every detail, which latter is a great deal more than can be
said of any written natural history that ever I came across. But I will
not go into that now. Leaning over the rail, with the great rorqual
laying perfectly still a few feet below, I was told to mark how slender
and elegant were his proportions. "Clipper-built," my Mentor termed him.
He was full seventy feet long, but his greatest diameter would not reach
ten feet. His snout was long and pointed, while both top and bottom of
his head were nearly flat. When he came up to breathe, which he did out
of the top of his head, he showed us that, instead of teeth, he had a
narrow fringe of baleen (whalebone) all around his upper jaws, although
"I kaint see whyfor, kase he lib on all sort er fish, s'long's dey
ain't too big. I serpose w'en he kaint get nary fish he do de same ez
de 'bowhead'--go er siftin eout dem little tings we calls whale-feed wiv
dat ar' rangement he carry in his mouf." "But why don't we harpoon him?"
I asked. Goliath turned on me a pitying look, as he replied, "Sonny,
ef yew wuz ter go on stick iron inter dat ar fish, yew'd fink de hole
bottom fell eout kerblunk. W'en I uz young 'n foolish, a finback range
'longside me one day, off de Seychelles. I just done gone miss' a spam
whale, and I was kiender mad,--muss ha' bin. Wall, I let him hab it blam
'tween de ribs. If I lib ten tousan year, ain't gwine ter fergit dat ar.
Wa'nt no time ter spit, tell ye; eberybody hang ober de side ob de boat.
Wiz--poof!--de line all gone. Clar to glory, I neber see it go. Ef it
hab ketch anywhar, nobody eber see US too. Fus, I t'ought I jump ober
de side--neber face de skipper any mo'. But he uz er good ole man, en
he only say, 'Don't be sech blame jackass any more.' En I don't." From
which lucid narration I gathered that the finback had himself to thank
for his immunity from pursuit. "'Sides," persisted Goliath, "wa' yew
gwine do wiv' him? Ain't six inch uv blubber anywhere 'bout his long
ugly carkiss; en dat, dirty lill' rag 'er whalebone he got in his mouf,
'taint worf fifty cents. En mor'n dat, we pick up, a dead one when I
uz in de ole RAINBOW--done choke hisself, I spec, en we cut him in. He
stink fit ter pi