I could not see the new spouts, of course, from my place on deck, and I sprang into the fore rigging, clasping my old glass, which I had brought up with me after breakfast. Many others of the men swarmed up, but I was first, and I went rapidly up as far as I could get, and put the glass to my eyes.
I did not see them at first, for it was about four bells—ten o’clock in the forenoon—I was looking to the eastward, directly into the glare, and I was expecting to see them nearer than they were; but at last I saw them. There were many spouts in the air at once over a wide arc of the sea; and the sun shining on them all, and glorifying them into tiny ostrich plumes, each on Ann McKim’s hat.
Every time that I saw a sperm whale’s spout with the sun shining upon it, I thought of that hat of Ann McKim. Ann McKim was a few months older than I—she is yet, although that fact is not generally published—and when I left home she had just got her first plumed hat. It was a big, broad-brimmed hat of dark blue satin—or velvet, I do not know which—with a generous white ostrich plume sticking up from the brim at just the angle of a sperm whale’s spout. I know she had bought it with her own money, and had trimmed it herself, for she told me so. No doubt such a hat was absurd, especially on a girl of fifteen, but it did not seem absurd to her, nor to me when I saw her with it on, the Sunday before I came away. But Ann McKim was sweet and lovely, and she would have lent beauty to any hat she chose to wear.
The large school of whales did not seem to be going anywhere in particular as a body, although the individuals of the school continually moved about, or sounded, or came up again. They may have been feeding. The bull and the wounded cow and calf which we had been chasing were evidently meaning to join the school, and we followed them, getting all the boats ready for lowering as we went. We were now getting the full sweep of the trades, steady and strong, and we gained on the three whales, so that we were in a position to see well what happened when they neared the school.
A big bull swam out from the school to inspect the newcomers. He was not old and scarred, as most of the lone whales were, but as big as any of them, and in his prime. Although we were not far off, that means perhaps half a mile; and as but little of the whales was out of water, I could not see with any certainty what went on. The big bull at once joined the cow, and swam beside her for some distance, apparently trying to persuade her to leave her lord and come with him; an unnecessary proceeding, as that was just what she was doing. He seemed to pay no attention to the calf. It was no concern of his. The cow swam on, and took no notice of him, so far as I could see, but the other bull did not like it. He was not so very much smaller than the big one, and before I realized that there was anything on the programme, here he was, coming for the big bull, fire in his eye, I could imagine, and jaw dropped. When he was a hundred feet away, he turned over, nearly on his back, apparently, for I saw his jaw projecting above the surface of the water.
The big bull was aware of the other just in time to slip out of the way, but not in time to escape entirely. The jaw closed on his small, and I saw the wounds made by the teeth, which tore out great pieces of blubber and flesh. By what seemed agreement, the two big whales turned about as soon as they could and went at each other full tilt. Their jaws locked, and they wrestled there for a minute, each seeming to try to break the jaw of the other, and tearing and thrashing the water into boiling fountains of spray. As we found out later, great gobs of flesh were torn from the sides of their heads. After a while they broke their hold, I could not see how, and they backed off and went at it again.
This time the fight was fiercer than before, and it was impossible to see what was happening, or to see anything but white water. This round was a little longer than the first. The performance was repeated two or three times, and then I saw the boiling white water gradually become quiet. The two great bodies lay there for a few seconds, head to head; then the smaller of the whales moved off slowly away from the school. He seemed to have lost all interest in the cow, and the bigger one, satisfied that the other had definitely given up the fight, let him go in peace. Both whales seemed to be in distress. I saw the big one, as he swam to join the school, raise his head completely out of water two or three times, and his jaw seemed to be slewed around so that it would not close properly. He had difficulty in moving it at all.
Up to this point it had not seemed to be a propitious time for lowering, but when the fight was over, Mr. Tilton lowered at once, and went after the vanquished bull. He was still moving slowly, and the boat easily overtook him, and got fast. He made no fight at all, but lay fin out in fifteen minutes. His jaw was hanging down queerly, and when we got him alongside and began to cut-in, we found that it had been broken short off, and was hanging by the flesh. Many of his teeth were stove out, and he had terrible wounds in the head.
Meanwhile the ship had kept off after the school, which began to show signs of moving along. We got pretty near it, however, and lowered three more boats, but we did not succeed in getting whales of any size. The school consisted principally of rather small cows, under the charge of two or three bulls as schoolmasters. We could not find the bull which had been fighting, and did not look for the others, for schoolmasters are always pugnacious devils. They have to be. We managed to get three small cows of about twenty barrels apiece before the school was well under way and left us. One of these cows was lost during the night, stripped by sharks and broken adrift, and much of another fell a prey to the sharks. Four whales at once alongside is almost too much to take care of. We got the blubber all hove in by sunset of the next day, and the carcasses cut adrift. They made only a hundred and twelve barrels altogether, only about as much as we might have expected to get from one really big whale in those waters.