Very good; but there is more coming.
Some weeks later, the Commodore set sail in this impregnable craft
for Valparaiso. But he was stopped on the way by a portly sperm whale,
that begged a few moments' confidential business with him.
That business consisted in fetching the Commodore's craft such a thwack,
that with all his pumps going he made straight for the nearest
port to heave down and repair. I am not superstitious, but I
consider the Commodore's interview with that whale as providential.
Was not Saul of Tarsus converted from unbelief by a similar fright?
I tell you, the sperm whale will stand no nonsense.
I will now refer you to Langsdorff's Voyages for a little circumstance
in point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof. Langsdorff, you
must know by the way, was attached to the Russian Admiral Krusenstern's
famous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of the present century.
Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter:
"By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail,
and the next day we were out in the open sea, on our way
to Ochotsh. The weather was very clear and fine, but so intolerably
cold that we were obliged to keep on our fur clothing.
For some days we had very little wind; it was not till
the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwest sprang up.
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