WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 155 



town and the island go by, and think of Madeira and the 

 Cape Verde, and hope that some day soon our little expedi- 

 tion will begin to pay, and try to forget that so far we have 

 only incurred expenses five shillings here and five pounds 

 there pilotage and telegrams, and a thousand trifles that 

 mount up alarmingly without one penny of return. 



Thus musing somewhat sadly, and all the time listening to 

 the beat of our engines, I notice they suddenly go a little 

 slow, and a tide of depression that even the joy of leaving 

 port will not quite raise, floods my spirits. Yes, they are 

 dead slow now something wrong again ! and I harden my 

 heart and turn out and find we are heading back for the 

 distant island more weeks of detention, I can see. But 

 what is this everyone is intently looking forward with 

 craned necks ! 



Great Scott ! There are whales SPERM as you live ! 

 At last whales ! One little blast on the calm grey ocean 

 a mile away, then another, eight or nine. Nine times 

 several hundred pounds sterling rolling round, each about 

 a mile apart. Are we really in our senses are we really to 

 strike oil ? Heaven be praised it is not the engine it is 

 all right. 



We're after one. 



Henriksen made a bee-line down to his cabin, got out powder 

 and had the harpoon-gun loaded and ready in two shakes. 



It is difficult to write about the day now, we are tired, 

 the work has been great and our first whale worth, say, some 

 hundred pounds, enough to cover our outward-bound ex- 

 penses ; it seems hardly believable. 



It is true we have only one of these sperm. We could, I 

 believe, have killed several, but for a completely new crew l 

 at whaling ; we thought one would be enough for us. It is 

 a bit awkward with one fish running a line, to tackle a 

 second that perhaps goes in the opposite direction, and the 

 flensing at sea for such a small crew is such a big work that 

 we simply stuck to the one. 



1 Only a few of our men have done bottle-nose whaling, but that is the 

 same thing on a small scale. 



