"No, I sha'n't bother with 'em. If we can't get sperm oil, we'll go home empty-handed. Keep her along full and by! _Look sharp there aloft for another kind._ These whales have got too many spout-holes for my use." It was even so with Nantucket whalemen at the period of which I am writing. A whale who showed evidence of having two spiracles was not worth bothering about. And even for years after the great North-west whaling grounds were opened, and rich returns were pouring into New Bedford, New London and other whaling ports, the islanders, the pioneers of whaling, still clung to their old faith and plodded on over their old grounds, picking up a sperm whale now and then, and spending four years or more to get, in most instances, about half a cargo. They ignored the great Nor'west; it was a myth; the very sound of it a great bugbear. "Spermaceti or empty casks" was their platform for many years; and then at last they woke from this delusion, it was too late; the cream had been skimmed from the northern grounds, and the palmiest days of right whaling were over. "Have you ever been right whaling, Cooper?" I asked after the stir was over and all was quiet again. "Right whaling? yes, two voyages on the Banks. Talk about fighting whales! You ought to see one of those fellows pick his teeth with the corner of his flukes." "How's dat, when dey's got no teeth?" asked the cook, who stood within hearing. "They've no teeth, strictly speaking, that's true; but they've slabs of bone which amounts to the same thing for all the purposes of the story. I've seen 'em do it many a time--slat their flukes from eye to eye. Whip-lashes are nothing to 'em." "Make more oil than sperm whales, don't they?" I asked. "Yes, such as 'tis--make four or five hundred barrels sometimes!" "Do they ever eat up boats?" I inquired. "No, never fight with their heads; they wear 'bonnets' on their heads, and I suppose they don't like to rumple them." "What are they made of?" asked Fisher. "Gauze and ribbons?" "No--lice and barnacles," said the cooper. "Do the bulls wear bonnets, too?" "Yes, of course." "Do they have new bonnets as often as the fashions change?" The only answer was a warlike demonstration with a squilgee that lay at hand; and Fisher beat a retreat.