THE AMBER WHALE.
247
THE AMBER WHALE: A HARPOONEER'S STORY.
[Whalemen have a strange belief as to the formation of amber. They say that it is a petrifaction of some internal part of a whale; and they tell weird stories of enormous whales seen in the warm latitudes, that were almost entirely transformed into the precious substance.]
WE were down in the Indian Ocean, after sperm, and three years out;
The last six months in the tropics, and looking in vain for a spout,—
Five men up on the royal yards, weary of straining their sight;
And every day like its brother,—just morning and noon and night—
Nothing to break the sameness: water and wind and sun
Motionless, gentle, and blazing,—never a change in one.
