Instances of the combativeness of the sperm-whale are not confined to the records of the whale fishery.  Even as I write I find in a current San Francisco newspaper the story of the pilot-boat “Bonita,” sunk near the Farallon Islands by a whale that attacked her out of sheer wantonness and lust for fight.  The “Bonita” was lying hove-to, lazily riding the swells, when in the dark—­it was 10 o’clock at night—­there came a prodigious shock, that threw all standing to the deck and made the pots and pans of the cook’s galley jingle like a chime out of tune.  From the deck the prodigious black bulk of a whale, about eighty feet long, could be made out, lying lazily half out of water near the vessel.  The timbers of the “Bonita” must have been crushed by his impact, for she began to fill, and soon sank.

In this case the disaster was probably not due to any rage or malicious intent on the part of the whale.  Indeed, in the days when the ocean was more densely populated with these huge animals, collision with a whale was a well-recognized maritime peril.  How many of the stout vessels against whose names on the shipping list stands the fatal word “missing,” came to their ends in this way can never be known; but maritime annals are full of the reports of captains who ran “bows on” into a mysterious reef where the chart showed no obstruction, but which proved to be a whale, reddening the sea with his blood, and sending the ship—­not less sorely wounded—­into some neighboring port to refit.

The tools with which the business of hunting the whale is pursued are simple, even rude.  Steam, it is true, has succeeded to sails, and explosives have displaced the sinewy arm of the harpooner for launching the deadly shafts; but in the main the pursuit of the monsters is conducted now as it was sixty years ago, when to command a whaler was the dearest ambition of a New England coastboy.  The vessels were usually brigs or barks, occasionally schooners, ranging from 100 to 500 tons.  They had a characteristic architecture, due in part to the subordination of speed to carrying capacity, and further to the specially heavy timbering about the bows to withstand the crushing of the Arctic ice-pack.  The bow was scarce distinguishable from the stern by its lines, and the masts stuck up straight, without that rake, which adds so much to the trim appearance of a clipper.  Three peculiarities chiefly distinguished the whalers from other ships of the same general character.  At the main royal-mast head was fixed the “crow’s nest”—­in some vessels a heavy barrel lashed to the mast, in others merely a small platform laid on the cross-trees, with two hoops fixed to the mast above, within which the lookout could stand in safety.  On the deck, amidships, stood the “try-works,” brick furnaces, holding two or three great kettles, in which the blubber was reduced to odorless oil.  Along each rail were heavy, clumsy wooden cranes, or davits, from which hung the whale-boats—­never less than five, sometimes more, while still others were lashed to the deck, for boats were the whale’s sport and playthings, and seldom was a big “fish” made fast that there was not work for the ship’s carpenter.