The “maternal solicitude” of the whale makes her a dangerous adversary, and many serious accidents occur in the season for catching whales.  On one occasion I had nearly paid with my life for the gratification of my curiosity.  I went in a whale-boat rowed by coloured men, natives of the islands, who were very daring and expert in this pursuit.  We saw a whale, with her calf, playing round the coral rocks; the attention which the dam showed to its young, the care she took to warn it of danger, was truly affecting.  She led it away from the boats, swam round it, and sometimes she would embrace it with her fins, and roll over with it in the waves.  We contrived to get the “’vantage ground” by going to seaward of her, and by that means drove her into shoal water among the rocks.  At last we came so near the young one, that the harpooner poised his weapon, knowing that the calf once struck, the mother was our own, for she would never desert it.  Aware of the danger and impending fate of its inexperienced offspring, she swam rapidly round it, in decreasing circles, evincing the utmost uneasiness and anxiety; but the parental admonitions were unheeded, and it met its fate.

The boat approached the side of the younger fish, and the harpooner buried his tremendous weapon deep in the ribs.  The moment it felt the wound, the poor animal darted from us, taking out a hundred fathom of line; but a young fish is soon conquered when once well struck:  such was the case in this instance; it was no sooner checked with the line than it turned on its back, and, displaying its white belly on the surface of the water, floated a lifeless corpse.  The unhappy parent, with an instinct always more powerful than reason, never quitted the body.

We hauled in upon the line, and came close up to our quarry just as another boat had fixed a harpoon in the mother.  The tail of the furious animal descended with irresistible force upon the very centre of our boat, cutting it in two, and killing two of the men; the survivors took to swimming for their lives in all directions.  The whale went in pursuit of the third boat, but was checked by the line from the one that had struck her:  she towed them at the rate of ten or eleven miles an hour:  and had she had deep water, would have taken the boat down, or obliged them to cut away from her.

The two boats were so much employed that they could not come to our assistance for some time, and we were left to our own resources much longer than I thought agreeable.  I was going to swim to the calf whale; but one of the men advised me not to do so, saying that the sharks would be as thick about him as the lawyers round Westminster Hall; and that I should certainly be snapped up if I went near:  for my comfort he added, “These devils seldom touch a man if they can get anything else.”  This might be very true; but I must confess I was very glad to see one of the boats come to our assistance, while the mother whale, encumbered with the heavy harpoon and line, and exhausted with the fountain of black blood which she threw up, drew near to her calf, and died by its side; evidently, in her last moments, more occupied with the preservation of her young than of herself.