BY GEORGE H. COOMER.
One of the most exciting scenes with a whale which I ever witnessed occurred while I belonged to the ship Luminary, upon a cruise in the Arctic Ocean.
The noble game had at that period become very wild. Chased successively from the North Pacific, from the Okhotsk, and from the Sea of Kamtschatka, they had finally taken refuge above Behring Strait; and thither the fleet of eager "blubber-hunters" had followed them, like Nelson in pursuit of the French.
The stately old Luminary, with all her royals set, and her trim, handsome boats upon the cranes, had stood gallantly to the northward, braving, with her many expectant consorts, the keen breezes from the pole. The Arctic was to be our Trafalgar, where the fleeing enemy, at last driven to bay, must yield to a general attack.
It should be borne in mind that the right-whale, the species of which we were in pursuit, grows to a much larger size than the sperm. Some which we captured "stowed down" more than two hundred barrels each, and we heard of others of still greater bulk.
They were dangerous old fellows too, although, unlike the sperm-whale, they acted solely on the defensive, and never came at us head on.
After a time there was circulated through the fleet a rumor of a certain great whale that everybody wanted, and nobody could get. Captain Burdick, of the Canova, had seen and ventured upon him.
"He kicked like a mustang," said the Captain; "stove two of my boats, and threw me twenty feet high, so that if I hadn't seen where I was going to fall, and turned myself in the air, I should have come down among all those harpoons and lances and splinters. There's three hundred and fifty barrels under that old black hide if there's a gallon."
But Captain Burdick would lie—he was proverbial for it—and the men said, "Oh, that's only one of Burdick's yarns." He was blown up once in a steamer loaded with carpenters' tools, and told how he dodged the augers that whizzed about his head.
We soon found, however, that Captain Burdick and the Canova were not the only master and ship that had encountered the great whale. Captain Atwell, of the Atlantic, had seen him; Captain Soule, of the South America, had seen him; Captain Robbins, of the Tartar, had seen him; and they all told us that he had more irons in his back than a porcupine had quills.