"Sperm pretty scarce nowadays," Gabriel resumed. "Nothing like as plentiful in Pacific waters as dey used to be in de ole days. Whalers done pretty well thinned 'em out. But long ago, it used to be nothin' to see schools of a hundred, mostly cows wit' three or four big bulls among 'em."
"Any difference between a bowhead and a right whale?" some one asked.
"O good Lord, yes," answered Gabriel. "Big difference. Right whale thinner whale dan a bowhead, ain't got sech thick blubber neither. He's quicker in de water and got nothin' like such long baleen. You ketch right whale in Behring Sea. I ain't never see none in de Arctic Ocean. You ketch bowhead both places. Right whale fightin' feesh, too, but he ain't so dangerous as a sperm."
Let me add that I give this statement of the old whaleman for what it is worth. All books I have ever read on the subject go on the theory that the Greenland or right whale is the same animal as the bowhead. We lowered for a right whale later in the voyage in Behring Sea. To my untrained eyes, it looked like a bowhead which we encountered every few days while on the Arctic Ocean whaling grounds. But there was no doubt or argument about it among the old whalemen aboard. To them it was a "right whale" and nothing else. Old Gabriel may have known what he was talking about. Despite the naturalists, whalers certainly make a pronounced distinction.
By the time Gabriel had imparted all this information, we had worked to within a half mile of our whale which was still steaming along at the rate of knots. They say a sperm whale has ears so small they are scarcely detected, but it has a wonderfully keen sense of hearing for all that. Our whale must have heard us or seen us. At any rate it bade us a sudden good-bye and scurried off unceremoniously over the rim of the world. The boats kept on along the course it was heading for over an hour, but the whale never again favored us with so much as a distant spout. Finally signals from the brig's mast-head summoned us aboard.
As the men had had no practice in the boats before, both boats lowered sail and we started to row back to the vessel. We had pulled about a mile when Mendez, who was acting as boatsteerer, said quietly, "Blow! Blackfish dead ahead."
"Aye, aye," replied Gabriel. "Now stand by, Tomas. I'll jes' lay you aboard one o' dem blackfeesh and we'll teach dese green fellers somethin' 'bout whalin'."
There were about fifty blackfish in the school. They are a species of small toothed whale, from ten to twenty feet long, eight or ten feet in circumference and weighing two or three tons. They were gamboling and tumbling like porpoises. Their black bodies flashed above the surface in undulant curves and I wondered if, when seen at a distance, these little cousins of the sperm had not at some time played their part in establishing the myth of the sea serpent.
"Get ready, Tomas," said Gabriel as we drew near the school.
"Aye, aye, sir," responded Mendez.