The sailors had also a superstition that whales entertain so great a
dislike for mermaids as to proceed to visit their friends and relatives
in another sea as soon as they made their appearance.
Captain Price Bottom declared he was too old a whale-killer to put any
faith in the story of the mermaids. Whales, he said, had sense and
pluck, and were not to be frightened away by such fish as mermaids. He
had his deck cleared, his gear put in order, his boats' crews told off,
and officers and men kept practising and made familiar with their
duties. Still not a whale showed his head, or blew a challenge to put
their skill in practice. The bluff old captain began to feel at last
that luck had left him. Morning after morning he would loom up in the
companion way before the crew was up, gaze up at the lookout aloft, ask
the usual questions concerning the night's sailing, then shake his head
despondingly.
"Fifteen months out--sixteen months out--and not a whale killed!" he
would say. Then taking the glass he would make a turn or two of the
quarter-deck, looking here and looking there, as if to satisfy himself
that there was nothing between his ship and the horizon.
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