The month of October
in those latitudes gave us some lovely autumnal days. It was the Canadian--
he could not be mistaken--who signalled a whale on the eastern horizon.
Looking attentively, one might see its black back rise and fall with the waves
five miles from the Nautilus.
"Ah!" exclaimed Ned Land, "if I was on board a whaler, now such
a meeting would give me pleasure. It is one of large size.
See with what strength its blow-holes throw up columns of air an steam!
Confound it, why am I bound to these steel plates?"
"What, Ned," said I, "you have not forgotten your old ideas of fishing?"
"Can a whale-fisher ever forget his old trade, sir? Can he ever
tire of the emotions caused by such a chase?"
"You have never fished in these seas, Ned?"
"Never, sir; in the northern only, and as much in Behring
as in Davis Straits."
"Then the southern whale is still unknown to you. It is the Greenland
whale you have hunted up to this time, and that would not risk passing
through the warm waters of the equator. Whales are localised,
according to their kinds, in certain seas which they never leave.
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