It is now twenty-four days since he attached himself to us, and during that time he has followed us as faithfully as a dog an emigrant’s wagon. At first we abused him in every way that our ingenuity could devise to drive him off, lest he might do us some mischief; but save some scratches he received from our ship’s coppering and numerous sloughing sores, caused by the balls that had been fired into him, no damage was received by either of us by his close companionship, though our white paint was badly stained by the impurity of his breath. We long since ceased our efforts to annoy him, and had become attached to him as to a dog. We had named him “Blowhard,” and even fancied, as we called him, that his came closer under our quarter, when I felt like patting his glabrous sides, and saying: “Good old fellow.” As the water grew shoaler he left us, with regret unfeigned on our part, and apparently so on his. This story of the whale is so remarkable, that were there not so many witnesses, I would not venture to tell it, lest I be accused of exaggeration. There were a number of experienced whalemen among our passengers, who said the animal was a “Sulphurbottom.”[6] Footnote 6: (_l. c._, p. 71, note.) [Illustration: The skull of an eighty-foot blue whale, the skeleton of which was sent to the American Museum of Natural History from Japan. When crated for shipment the skull had a space measurement of twenty-one tons. ] CHAPTER XIII THE GREYHOUND OF THE SEA The finback whale is the greyhound of the sea, and well deserves the name, for its beautiful, slender body is built like a racing yacht and the animal can surpass the speed of the fastest ocean steamship. It is a hard whale to kill and trouble can always be expected if the iron strikes too far back. The first one I ever hunted gave us a four hours’ fight, with two harpoons in its body, and furnished abundant proof of what a truly magnificent creature the finback is. It was while I was with Captain Charles Grahame on the _Tyee_ in Alaska. We had had an exciting experience with a humpback whale which rose under the ship (described in Chapter III), and after killing it had steamed toward several finbacks which were spouting far away near the coast. The huge brutes were feeding and lying on the surface rolling from side to side, thrusting their fins and flukes into the air. I could see, with the glass, that always when taking a mouthful of shrimps they turned on their sides, letting the great under jaws close over the upper, the water spurting out in streams from between the plates of baleen. [Illustration: “The finback whale is the greyhound of the sea ... for its beautiful slender body is built like a racing yacht and the animal can surpass the speed of the fastest ocean steamship.” ]