Sperm whale

Any thoughtful observer who has ever seen a school of sperm whales numbering several hundreds and understood from the configuration of their jaws that they must of necessity feed upon large creatures can never after feel difficulty in believing that in order to supply the enormous demand for food made by these whales, their prey must be imposing in size and abundant in quantity.

On my first meeting with the Cachalot, on terms of mutual destruction, I knew nothing of his habits and cared less.

But seeing him, when wounded, vomiting great masses of white substance, my curiosity was aroused, and when I saw that these masses were parts of a mighty creature almost identical in structure with the small squid so often picked up on deck, where it falls in its frantic efforts to escape from the dolphins, coryphaenae, albacore, or bonito, my amazement was great.

Some of these fragments were truly heroic in size.

Surgeon Beale, in his book on the sperm whale, only credits the Cachalot with being able to swallow a man.

But with all the respect due to so great a writer, I am bound to say that such masses as I have seen ejected from the stomach of the dying whale could only have entered a throat to which a man was as a pill is to us.

We can, however, only speak of what we have seen, and perhaps Dr. Beale had never seen such large pieces ejected.

Chapter twenty-nine: An Interview.