The only exception he seems to make is in the case of man.  Instances have several—­nay, many times occurred where men have been slain by the jaws of a cachalot crushing the boat in which they were; but their death was of course incidental to the destruction of the boat.  Never, as far as I have been able to ascertain, has a cachalot attacked a man swimming or clinging to a piece of wreckage, although such opportunities occur innumerably.  I have in another place told the story of how I once saw a combat between a bull-cachalot and so powerful a combination of enemies that even one knowing the fighting qualities of the sperm whale would have hesitated to back him to win, but the yarn will bear repetition.

Two “killers” and a sword-fish, all of the largest size.  Description of these warriors is superfluous, since they are so well known to museums and natural histories; but unless one has witnessed the charge of a XIPHIAS, he cannot realize what a fearful foe it is.  Still, as a practice, these creatures leave the cachalot respectfully alone, knowing instinctively that he is not their game.  Upon this memorable occasion, however I guess the two Orcas were starving, and they had organized a sort of forlorn hope with the XIPHIAS as an auxiliary who might be relied upon to ensure success if it could be done.  Anyhow, the syndicate led off with their main force first; for while the two killers hung on the cachalot’s flanks, diverting his attention, the sword-fish, a giant some sixteen feet long, launched himself at the most vulnerable part of the whale, for all the world like a Whitehead torpedo.  The wary eye of the whale saw the long, dark mass coming, and, like a practised pugilist, coolly swerved, taking for the nonce no notice of those worrying wolves astern.  The shock came; but instead of the sword penetrating three, or maybe four feet just where the neck (if a whale has any neck) encloses the huge heart, it met the mighty, impenetrable mass of the head, solid as a block of thirty tons of india-rubber.

So the blow glanced, revealing a white streak running diagonally across the eye, while the great XIPHIAS rolled helplessly over the top of that black bastion.  With a motion so rapid that the eye could scarcely follow it, the whale turned, settling withal, and, catching the momentarily motionless aggressor in the lethal sweep of those awful shears, crunched him in two halves, which writhing sections he swallowed seriatim.  And the allied forces aft—­what of them?  Well, they had been rash—­they fully realized that fact, and would have fled, but one certainly found that he had lingered on the scene too long.  The thoroughly-roused leviathan, with a reversal of his huge bulk that made the sea boil like a pot, brandished his tail aloft and brought it down upon the doomed “killer,” making him at once the “killed.”  He was crushed like a shrimp under one’s heel.

The survivor fled—­never faster—­for an avalanche of living, furious flesh was behind him, and coming with enormous leaps half out of the sea every time.  Thus they disappeared, but I have no doubts as to the issue.  Of one thing I am certain—­that, if any of the trio survived, they never afterwards attempted to rush a cachalot.