FAREWELL TO VAU VAU. 289 



sudden plunge the long, straight parcel slid off the hatch 

 into the vast tomb ever ready for the dead sailor. 



Our dead out of sight, work claimed all our attention 

 and energy, wiping out with its beneficent influence all 

 gloomy musings over the inevitable, and replacing them 

 with the pressing needs of life. The whale was not a 

 large one, but peculiar to look at. Like the specimen 

 that fought so fiercely with us in the Indian Ocean, its 

 jaw was twisted round in a sort of hook, the part that 

 curved being so thickly covered with long barnacles as 

 to give the monster a most eerie look. One of the 

 Portuguese expressed his decided opinion that we had 

 caught Davy Jones himself, and that, in consequence, 

 we should have no more accidents. It was impossible 

 not to sympathize with the conceit, for of all the queer- 

 looking monstrosities ever seen, this latest acquisition of 

 ours would have taken high honours. Such malforma- 

 tions of the lower mandible of the cachalot have often 

 been met with, and variously explained; but the most 

 plausible opinion seems to be that they have been 

 acquired when the animal is very young, and its bones 

 not yet indurated, since it is impossible to believe that 

 an adult could suffer such an accident without the broken 

 jaw drooping instead of being turned on one side. 



The yield of oil was distressingly scanty, the whale 

 being what is technically known as a " dry skin." The 

 blubber was so hard and tough that we could hardly cut 

 it up for boiling, and altogether it was one of the most 

 disappointing affairs we had yet dealt with. This poor- 

 ness of blubber was, to my mind, undoubtedly due to the 

 difficulty the animal must have had in obtaining food 

 with his disabling defect of jaw. Whatever it was, we 

 were heartily glad to see the last of the beast, fervently 

 hoping we should never meet with another like him. 



