320 Reminiscences of 



proceeded on, I saw what I thought to be a red blanket 

 floating on the surface of the sea not far astern, and 

 drew the attention of my men to it; a veritable red 

 blanket it seemed, but my men said immediately 

 it was the blood from the grampus, and we put back 

 towards it, and shortly saw the grampus come out 

 and down, not far off. As I observed him when he 

 came up I distinctly saw the blood running down the 

 side of his head, and again and again he came up and 

 down, still bleeding. This indicated a severe wound, 

 and the grampus by its slow movements convinced 

 us that its end was near. With harpoon ready we 

 followed close, and I soon had a close approach as he 

 came up, and put the harpoon in successfully, when, 

 allowing a good slack, we warped the rope around 

 a post in the bow of the boat, and went off at good 

 speed, with a crest rolling wave at our bow. We 

 found he had much strength remaining, and kept 

 up his brisk gait for ten or twelve minutes, when his 

 speed diminished, and soon after gave out entirely, 

 and his huge body floated on the surface. We waited 

 for his death flurry, but it did not come, and we hauled 

 our boat uj) to him and fixed a noose line over his 

 broad tail, and set sail with a fair strong breeze to 

 the Monterey pier. 



Quite a number of bathers from the Del Monte 

 were in at the beach watching our approach when 

 we landed from our boat. Our grampus was grounded 

 some thirty feet from the shore, and all joined us in 

 the haul ashore, making an advance with our grampus 

 with each successive lifting wave as it rolled in. But 

 the united force was not sufficient, with more than'a 

 score of pullers, to get the body clear from the water, 



