In
'65, just two and a half years ago, I to whom you speak, I myself stepped onto the carcass of a whale near Greenland, and its flank still carried the marked harpoon of a whaling ship from the Bering Sea.
Now I ask you, after it had been wounded west of America, how could this animal be killed in the east, unless it had cleared the equator and doubled Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope?"
"I agree with our friend Ned," Conseil said, "and I'm waiting to hear how Master will reply to him."
"Master will reply, my friends, that baleen whales are localized, according to species, within certain seas that they never leave.
And if one of these animals went from the Bering Strait to the Davis Strait, it's quite simply because there's some passageway from the one sea to the other, either along the coasts of Canada or Siberia."
"You expect us to fall for that?" the Canadian asked, tipping me a wink.
"If Master says so," Conseil replied.
"Which means," the Canadian went on, "since I've never fished these waterways, I don't know the whales that frequent them?"
"That's what I've been telling you, Ned."
"All the more reason to get to know them," Conseil answered.
"Look!
Look!" the Canadian exclaimed, his voice full of excitement.
"It's approaching!
It's coming toward us!
It's thumbing its nose at me!
It knows I can't do a blessed thing to it!"
Ned stamped his foot.
Brandishing an imaginary harpoon, his hands positively trembled.
"These cetaceans," he asked, "are they as big as the ones in the northernmost seas?"
"Pretty nearly, Ned."
"Because I've seen big baleen whales, sir, whales measuring up to 100 feet long!
I've even heard that those rorqual whales off the Aleutian Islands sometimes get over 150 feet."
"That strikes me as exaggerated," I replied.
"Those animals are only members of the genus Balaenoptera furnished with dorsal fins, and like sperm whales, they're generally smaller than the bowhead whale."
"Oh!" exclaimed the Canadian, whose eyes hadn't left the ocean.
"It's getting closer, it's coming into the Nautilus's waters!"
Then, going on with his conversation:
"You talk about sperm whales," he said, "as if they were little beasts!
But there are stories of gigantic sperm whales.
They're shrewd cetaceans.
I hear that some will cover themselves with algae and fucus plants.
People mistake them for islets.
They pitch camp on top, make themselves at home, light a fire—"
"Build houses," Conseil said.
"Yes, funny man," Ned Land replied.
"Then one fine day the animal dives and drags all its occupants down into the depths."
"Like in the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor," I answered, laughing.
"Oh, Mr. Land, you're addicted to tall tales!
What sperm whales you're handing us!
I hope you don't really believe in them!"
"Mr. Naturalist," the Canadian replied in all seriousness, "when it comes to whales, you can believe anything! (Look at that one move!
Look at it stealing away!) People claim these animals can circle around the world in just fifteen days."
"I don't say nay."
"But what you undoubtedly don't know, Professor Aronnax, is that at the beginning of the world, whales traveled even quicker."
"Oh really, Ned!
And why so?"
"Because in those days their tails moved side to side, like those on fish, in other words, their tails were straight up, thrashing the water from left to right, right to left.
But spotting that they swam too fast, our Creator twisted their tails, and ever since they've been thrashing the waves up and down, at the expense of their speed."
"Fine, Ned," I said, then resurrected one of the Canadian's expressions.