The sea being calm, and the tide suiting better, we found it easy to land close to the whale; my first care was to place the boat, as well as the casks, in perfect security, after which we proceeded to a close inspection of our prize.
Its enormous size quite startled my wife and her little boy; the length being from sixty to sixty-five feet, and the girth between thirty and forty, while the weight could not have been less than 50,000 lbs.
The color was a uniform velvety black, and the enormous head about one-third of the length of the entire bulk, the eyes quite small, not much larger than those of an ox, and the ears almost undiscernible.
The jaw opened very far back, and was nearly sixteen feet in length, the most curious part of its structure being the remarkable substance known as whalebone, masses of which appeared all along the jaws, solid at the base, and splitting into a sort of fringe at the extremity. This arrangement is for the purpose of aiding the whale in procuring its food, and separating it from the water.
The tongue was remarkably large, soft, and full of oil; the opening of the throat wonderfully small, scarcely two inches in diameter.
"Why, what can the monster eat?" exclaimed Fritz; "he never can swallow a proper mouthful down this little gullet!"
"The mode of feeding adopted by the whale is so curious," I replied, "that I must explain it to you before we begin work.
"This animal (for I should tell you that a whale is not a fish; he possesses no gills, he breathes atmospheric air, and would be drowned if too long detained below the surface of the water); this animal, then, frequents those parts of the ocean best supplied with the various creatures on which he feeds. Shrimps, small fish, lobsters, various mollusks, and medusae form his diet. Driving with open mouth through the congregated shoals of these little creatures, the whale engulfs them by millions in his enormous jaws, and continues his destructive course until he has sufficiently charged his mouth with prey.
"Closing his jaws and forcing out, through the interstices of the whalebone, the water which he has taken together with his prey, he retains the captured animals, and swallows them at his leisure.
"The nostrils, or blow-holes, are placed, you see, on the upper part of the head, in order that the whale may rise to breathe, and repose on the surface of the sea, showing very little of his huge carcass.