In the others men died fast, and at last the living were driven by hunger actually to eat the dead.

Out of the captain's boat two only were rescued; out of the mate's, three.

In all twelve men were sacrificed to the whale's rage.
Mere lust for combat seemed to animate this whale, for he had not been pursued by the men of the "Essex," though perhaps in some earlier meeting with men he had felt the sting of the harpoon and the searching thrust of the lance.

So great is the vitality of the cachalot that it not infrequently breaks away from its pursuers, and with two or three harpoon-heads in its body lives to a ripe, if not a placid, old age.

The whale that sunk the New Bedford ship "Ann Alexander" was one of these fighting veterans.