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1I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known to me, of the great power and malice at times of
2the sperm whale. In more than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing boats back to their
3ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks. The English ship
4Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head; and, as for his strength, let me say, that there have been examples where the
5lines attached to a running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred to the ship, and secured there; the whale
6towing her great hull through the water, as a horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often observed that, if the
7sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts, not so often with blind rage, as with wilful,
8deliberate designs of destruction to his pursuers; nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his
9character, that upon being attacked he will frequently open his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for several
10consecutive minutes. But I must be content with only one more and a concluding illustration; a remarkable and most
11significant one, by which you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous event in this book corroborated
12by plain facts of the present day, but that these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so that
13for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon--Verily there is nothing new under the sun. In the sixth Christian
14century lived Procopius, a Christian magistrate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and Belisarius
15general. As many know, he wrote the history of his own times, a work every way of uncommon value. By the best
16authorities, he has always been considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating historian, except in some one or two
17particulars, not at all affecting the matter presently to be mentioned. Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions
18that, during the term of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured in the neighboring
19Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed vessels at intervals in those waters for a period of more than
20fifty years. A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid. Nor is there any reason it should
21be. Of what precise species this sea-monster was, is not mentioned. But as he destroyed ships, as well as for other
22reasons, he must have been a whale; and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale. And I will tell you why. For a
23long time I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in the Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting
24with it. Even now I am certain that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the present constitution of things,
25a place for his habitual gregarious resort. But further investigations have recently proved to me, that in modern times
26there have been isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am told, on good
27authority, that on the Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis of the British navy found the skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, as
28a vessel of war readily passes through the Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route, pass out of the
29Mediterranean into the Propontis. In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar substance called brit
30is to be found, the aliment of the right whale. But I have every reason to believe that the food of the sperm
31whale--squid or cuttle-fish--lurks at the bottom of that sea, because large creatures, but by no means the largest of
32that sort, have been found at its surface. If, then, you properly put these statements together, and reason upon them a
33bit, you will clearly perceive that, according to all human reasoning, Procopius's sea-monster, that for half a century
34stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all probability have been a sperm whale.
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