158 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



take these to be the marks from the suckers on the tentacles 

 of the great cuttle-fish on which the sperm feeds, and here 

 and there, over its great sides, were deeper scrawls light- 

 brown-coloured lines on the greyish skin which may have 

 been made by the cuttle-fishes' parrot-like beaks. Two 

 of its companions came alongside it while it was still alive, 

 and tried to help it by shouldering it away from us. 



Had we only had a bay to tow these whales into we would 

 have easily taken more, but we did not quite know how the 

 Portuguese would have welcomed us had we towed their 

 bodies back to Ponta Delgada after killing them, if not 

 exactly at their own doors, still within sight of their town. 



The big grey backs with their blunt noses looked intensely 

 interesting when we first came amongst them cruising about 

 and puffing little forward jets of spray almost without the 

 least regard to our presence 



We have waited several months for the sight, and f am 

 inclined to think we feel repaid that is, looking at the 

 matter merely as hunting. 



. . . Somehow I feel at a loss here how to describe the 

 accumulation of feelings at the end of the long waiting 

 and planning. We feel we are right on the high road to 

 success, our engine worked perfectly, our vessel was appar- 

 ently calculated to a nicety to approach and kill whales, and 

 to keep the sea almost indefinitely. 



Big finner whaling, such as I have described in a previous 

 chapter, is much more exciting than killing these sperm or 

 cachalot, for which our tackle is unnecessarily powerful. 

 But after all, in the pursuit of any kind of game, it is the 

 hunting that counts as sport. The killing with any modern 

 weapon of precision is nothing, it is the getting there thalf 

 counts, and we have had many months both planning and 

 hunting before we got this, our first bull sperm ; also it is 

 of greater value than the largest finner ; and that must be 

 our first consideration. 



We found no ambergris l in this one. It disgorged several 

 cuttle-fish but they were not lost, for the sharks soon came 

 round, and nothing comes amiss to them. 



1 Ambergris. See Appendix. 



