After receiving our recruits in the afternoon, we weighed anchor and set sail for the north. The old whaling habit of cruising slowly and shortening sail at night was now abandoned. We crowded on sail and made for the Arctic with all possible speed. As we approached the Aleutian Islands, the weather grew colder, and the men began to look to the slop chest. I noticed that Ohoo called for the warmest outfit, and the poor fellow needed it.
And now a few words about bowheads. It wasn’t until 1843 that whalemen began to know anything about these whales. Indeed, before that time, they were ignorant that the right whale had this great brother. Their haunts were in the North Pacific and in the Arctic Sea. In the year named, a whaler for the first time visited the Okhotsk Sea and found and captured bowheads. Soon after they were discovered and taken off Alaska on what was called the Kodiak ground; and in 1847 a whaler named the _Superior_ entered Bering Strait. It was learned that, during the severe winter weather, these whales largely visited these two grounds in the North Pacific and then in June and July, as the lower Arctic became more or less free from ice, passed through Bering Strait for their summer sojourn. As more and more whalers visited the North Atlantic and the Arctic, the bowheads became more shy and went farther north. The whalers which pursued them were thus drawn into places where there was great danger from ice; and eleven years from the time of our story came the great disaster which even now bears the name of “Whalers Crushed by Ice.”
When we reached Bering Strait there was no longer any night. It is often said that it was at midnight when the first bowhead was taken in the Arctic. How can this be when, at the time we call midnight, it was daylight?
Several of the crew declared that we should now hear the singing whales, and I was anxious for an explanation. I could hardly believe what they told me when they said that bowheads communicate with one another by emitting sounds resembling singing. This is thought to be a signal, when passing through Bering Strait, to notify other whales that they are bound north and that the Strait is clear of ice. There is another explanation of this musical exercise. When a bowhead is struck, other bowheads in the neighborhood are frightened or “gallied”, and the singing is thought to be a signal of danger. I noticed that the cry was something like the hoo-oo-oo of the hoot owl, although longer drawn out and more of a humming sound than a hoot.