Lionel, it seems, was on his way to "John Ferdinando," as he callsthe modern Juan Fernandes. "In our way thither," he says, "aboutfour o'clock in the morning, when we were about one hundred andfifty leagues from the Main of America, our ship felt a terribleshock, which put our men in such consternation that they couldhardly tell where they were or what to think; but every one began toprepare for death. And, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent,that we took it for granted the ship had struck against a rock; butwhen the amazement was a little over, we cast the lead, and sounded,but found no ground. * * * The suddenness of the shock made the gunsleap in their carriages, and several of the men were shaken out oftheir hammocks. Captain Davis, who lay with his head on a gun, wasthrown out of his cabin!" Lionel then goes on to impute the shock toan earthquake, and seems to substantiate the imputation by statingthat a great earthquake, somewhere about that time, did actually dogreat mischief along the Spanish land. But I should not much wonderif, in the darkness of that early hour of the morning, the shock wasafter all caused by an unseen whale vertically bumping the hull frombeneath.
I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another knownto me, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale. Inmore than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase theassailing boats back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself,and long withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks. TheEnglish ship Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head; and, as for hisstrength, let me say, that there have been examples where the linesattached to a running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred tothe ship, and secured there! the whale towing her great hull throughthe water, as a horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very oftenobserved that, if the sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time torally, he then acts, not so often with blind rage, as with wilful,deliberate designs of destruction to his pursuers; nor is it withoutconveying some eloquent indication of his character, that upon beingattacked he will frequently open his mouth, and retain it in thatdread expansion for several consecutive minutes. But I must be contentwith only one more and a concluding illustration; a remarkable andmost significant one, by which you will not fail to see, that not onlyis the most marvellous event in this book corroborated by plainfacts of the present day, but that these marvels (like all marvels)are mere repetitions of the ages; so that for the millionth time wesay amen with Solomon- Verily there is nothing new under the sun.
In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christianmagistrate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperorand Belisarius general. As many know, he wrote the history of hisown times, a work every way of uncommon value. By the bestauthorities, he has always been considered a most trustworthy andunexaggerating historian, except in some one or two particulars, notat all affecting the matter presently to be mentioned.
Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during theterm of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster wascaptured in the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after havingdestroyed vessels at intervals in those waters for a period of morethan fifty years. A fact thus set down in substantial history cannoteasily be gainsaid. Nor is there any reason it should be. Of whatprecise species this sea-monster was, is not mentioned. But as hedestroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, he must have been awhale; and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale. And I willtell you why. For a long time I fancied that the sperm whale hadbeen always unknown in the Mediterranean and the deep watersconnecting with it. Even now I am certain that those seas are not, andperhaps never can be, in the present constitution of things, a placefor his habitual gregarious resort. But further investigations haverecently proved to me, that in modern times there have been isolatedinstances of the presence of the sperm whale in the Mediterranean. Iam told, on good authority, that on the Barbary coast, a CommodoreDavis of the British navy found the skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, asa vessel of war readily passes through the Dardanelles, hence asperm whale could, by the same route, pass out of the Mediterraneaninto the Propontis.
In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiarsubstance called brit is to be found, the aliment of the rightwhale. But I have every reason to believe that the food of the spermwhale- squid or cuttle-fish-lurks at the bottom of that sea, becauselarge creatures, but by no means the largest of that sort, have beenfound at its surface. If, then, you properly put these statementstogether, and reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceivethat, according to all human reasoning, Procopius's sea-monster,that for half a century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in1
