The whales were soon all about the ship, seemingly unafraid, still traveling leisurely, their heads rising and falling rhythmically, and at each rise blowing up a fountain of mist fifteen feet high. The fountains looked like water; some water surely was mixed with them; but I was told that the mist was the breath of the animals made visible by the colder air. The breath came from the blow holes in a sibilant roar that resembled no sound I had ever heard. If one can imagine a giant of fable snoring in his sleep, one may have an idea of the sound of the mighty exhalation. The great lungs whose gentle breathing could shoot a jet of spray fifteen feet into the air must have had the power of enormous bellows. Immense coal-black fellows these finbacks were--some at least sixty or seventy feet long. One swam so close to the brig that when he blew, the spray fell all about me, wetting my clothes like dew. The finback is a baleen whale and a cousin of the right whale and the bowhead. Their mouths are edged with close-set slabs of baleen, which, however, is so short that it is worthless for commercial purposes. They are of much slenderer build than the more valuable species of whale. Their quickness and activity make them dangerous when hunted in the boats, but their bodies are encased in blubber so thin that it is as worthless as their bone. Consequently they are not hunted unless a whaling ship is hard up for oil. We gradually worked into the trade winds that blew steadily from the southeast. These winds stayed with us for several weeks or rather we stayed with the winds; while in them it was rarely necessary to take in or set a sail or brace a yard. After we had passed through these aerial rivers, flowing through definite, if invisible, banks, we struck the doldrums--areas of calm between wind currents--they might be called whirlpools of stillness. Later in the day light, fitful breezes finally pushed us through them into the region of winds again.