128 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



all three. The blubber comes away with the skin and we 

 stripped it off and stowed it in casks aboard. 



" That's all we got that morning. But sometimes we 

 got as many as a dozen in the day. Dick he knew how to 

 stick the biggest and fattest bulls, he did. We used to 

 say Dick Rowney's father must have been a farmer 'cause 

 he knew the best bulls so well. And when he said as how 

 he was a gardener, we said leastways he could plant a 

 stick in a sea horse with the best of 'em. 



" Yes ! I once seed two old bulls fighting on the ice. 

 Lord ! it would have made you laugh to see the way they 

 jobbed at each other with their tusks. Damage each 

 other ? Well I can't say whether they did much harm 

 because of the distance. They prodded each other pretty 

 smart. Bat their skins is an inch or more thick, let alone 

 another inch or more of blubber. Why they'll flatten a 

 bullet at 50 yards. You might as well aim at an ironclad 

 (not as I thinks much of them. What with boilers busting 

 and running ashore they do a lot of fooling, they do). 

 But their skins is often covered with old wounds where 

 the tusks have gone in. So they must do some damage 

 though it is so thick. I can't say rightly, but Dick 

 Rowney a bit of a scholard was Dick I dare-say some of 

 your books and things can tell I can't say myself but 

 leastways Dick he said and Dick knew a thing or two, and 

 things as isn't in the books which books ain't everything 

 though Dick he'd read by the hour leastways Dick he said 

 and if he didn't know he oughter as the blubber was a 

 kind of ointment given them brutes by God Almighty to 

 heal their wounds. That's what Dick said, and I don't 

 know as why he shouldn't know as well as them as thinks 

 they knows." 



At this stage of our conversation I ceased to work the 

 pump handle quite so vigorously; for I found that my 



