aviour to what we had so long been accustomed
to was amazing. He did certainly give a lumbering splash or two with his
immense flukes, but no one could possibly have been endangered by them.
The water was so shallow that when he sounded it was but for a very few
minutes; there was no escape for him that way. As soon as he returned
to the surface he set off at his best gait, but that was so slow that
we easily hauled up close alongside of him, holding the boats in that
position without the slightest attempt to guard ourselves from reprisals
on his part, while the officers searched his vitals with the lances as
if they were probing a haystack.

Really, the whole affair was so tame that it was impossible to get up
any fighting enthusiasm over it; the poor, unwieldy creature died meekly
and quietly as an overgrown seal. In less than an hour from the time of
leaving the ship we were ready to bring our prize alongside.

Upon coming up to the whale, sail was shortened, and as soon as the
fluke-chain was passed we anchored. It was, I heard, our skipper's boast
that he could "skin a bowhead in forty minutes;" and although we were
certainly longer than that, the celerity with which what seemed a
gigantic task was accomplished was marvellous. Of course, it was all
plain-sailing, very unlike the complicated and herculean task inevitable
at the commencement of cutting-in a sperm whale.

Except for the head work, removing the blubber was effected in precisely
the same way as in the case of the cachalot. There was a marked
difference between the quantity of lard enveloping this whale and those
we had hitherto dealt with. It was nearly double the thickness, besides
being much richer in oil, which fairly dripped from it as we hoisted
in the blanket-pieces. The upper jaw was removed for its long plates of
whalebone or baleen--that valuable substance which alone makes it worth
while nowadays to go after the MYSTICETUS, the price obtained for the
oil being so low as to make it not worth while to fit out ships to go in
search of it alone. "Trying-out" the blubber, with its accompaniments,
is carried on precisely as with the sperm whale. The resultant oil, when
recent, is of a clear white, unlike the golden-tinted fluid obtained
from the cachalot. As it grows stale it developes a nauseous smell,
which sperm does not, although the odour of the oil is otto of roses
compared with the horrible mass of putridity landed from the tanks of a
Green