onical, and fitting
into sockets in the upper jaw instead of meeting the opposed surfaces
of other teeth, the accomplishment of such a feat must, I think, be
impossible.

The ship being now as good as anchored by the vast mass of flesh hanging
to her, there was a tremendous task awaiting us to get the other fish
alongside. Of course they were all to windward; they nearly always are,
unless the ship is persistently "turned to windward" while the fishing
is going on. Whalers believe that they always work up into the wind
while fast, and, when dead, it is certain that they drift at a pretty
good rate right in the "wind's eye." This is accounted for by the play
of the body, which naturally lies head to wind; and the wash of the
flukes, which, acting somewhat like the "sculling" of an oar at the
stern of a boat, propel the carcass in the direction it is pointing,
Consequently we had a cruel amount of towing to do before we got the
three cows alongside. Many a time we blessed ourselves that they were no
bigger, for of all the clumsy things to tow with boats, a sperm whale
is about the worst. Owing to the great square mass of the head, they can
hardly be towed head-on at all, the practice being to cut off the tips
of the flukes, and tow them tail first. But even then it is slavery. To
dip your oar about three times in the same hole from whence you withdrew
it, to tug at it with all your might, apparently making as much progress
as though you were fast to a dock-wall, and to continue this fun for
four or five hours at a stretch, is to wonder indeed whether you have
not mistaken your vocation.

However, "it's dogged as does it," so by dint of sheer sticking to the
oar, we eventually succeeded in getting all our prizes alongside before
eight bells that evening, securing them around us by hawsers to the
cows, but giving the big bull the post of honour alongside on the best
fluke-chain.

We were a busy company for a fortnight thence, until the last of the oil
was run below--two hundred and fifty barrels, or twenty-five tuns,
of the valuable fluid having rewarded our exertions. During these
operations we had drifted night and day, apparently without anybody
taking the slightest account of the direction we were taking; when,
therefore, on the day after clearing up the last traces of our fishing,
the cry of "Land ho!" came ringing down from the crow's-nest, no one was
surprised, although the part of the Pacific in which we were cru