276 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
back. After lying quite still for some time, it rolled over 
and showed a very small fin not far from his tail. 
We wonder if Sir James Ross mistook these whales for 
the Bowhead ; with his great experience in the Arctic we 
scarcely think it likely, and hold to the belief that he was 
right, and that the ^3000 whale, with its round smooth 
black back, is still here could we but find it. 
It is cold and damp, and the seals stay below water, so 
we have time to make off the blubber from the seal-skins 
on deck. Making off is the term for cutting the blubber 
from the skin. I daresay the drawing I have made shows 
how it is done better than my writing. 
It is a busy scene that goes on all day on deck. 
Immediately after meals all hands turn up on deck with 
their pipes going ; they are muffled up with cravats, and 
have their collars turned up and the ear-flaps of their caps 
pulled down. Then all get their knives out of their wooden 
sheaths, and there is a great rustling as they whet them on 
their steels, and every one sets to work. The old hands 
stand behind upright boards on which the seal-skins are 
hung, half on each side of the board, blubber side up. They 
cut from left to right, with a crisp, greasy, swish-swish at 
each sweep of the thin flat blade. The blubber curls 
off in yellow folds, and falls on deck, and a boy throws it 
with a small pitch-fork into the tanks. Other boys pre- 
pare the skins for the old hands ; they catch the lumps of 
flesh that have been left on the blubber in the hasty skin- 
ning on the snow with a steel hook and cut it off. At first 
there is plenty of talk, and jests fly about, then gradually 
the talk quiets down, and there is little sound but the: 
