hidden depths.  Every look-out from a mast-head notices that, when one whale is struck, at the very impact of the harpoon the whole school is “gallied” or stampeded as they hear the death-song.  The dying swan may not sing, but there is no doubt about the ante-mortem Valkyrie song of the whale.  From the Bowhead the sound comes like the drawn-out “hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo” of the hoot-owl.  A whaler stops coiling his harpoon-line to tell you that “beginning on ‘F’ the cry may rise to ‘A,’ ‘B,’ or even ‘C’ before slipping back to ‘F’ again.”  He assures us that, “with the Humpback the tone is much finer, sounding across the water like the ‘E’ string of a violin.”

Whalers themselves on this grim shore die without requiem.  Every year men desert from the ships.  They make their way across from Herschel to a mainland of whose geography they know nothing, thinking that once they strike the shore they can find railway trains which will take them to the gold-mines.  One man, Morand, left his ship without sled or dogs.  He carried only a gun, twenty rounds of ammunition, some cigarette papers and tobacco.  In the spring they found him about a day’s journey from the ship, frozen to death.  He sat with his gun leaning against his left arm, and a cigarette in his mouth.  Both feet and one hand were eaten off.  He had fired off nine shots, probably as a signal which was never heard.

[Illustration:  Breeding Grounds of the Seals]

Within recent years, on other shores but this one, an innovation has entered the whaling business.  The modern plan is to have shore-refineries and from these strategic bases to send out strongly-built high-speed steamers to shoot detonating harpoons from a cannon into the whale.  Such methods are pursued with profit on Newfoundland and Vancouver Island shores.  The gun-harpoon, the invention of Sven Foyn, a Norwegian, is furnished at the point with a contrivance which, as it enters the whale, opens out anchor-like flukes which clutch his vitals.  Connected by a line to the whaling-steamer, the harpoon holds the quarry until the whaler steams alongside, when the “fish” is soon dispatched.  A nozzle is attached to the harpoon-wound, and hot air from the engine pumped into the “proposition” keeps it afloat.  The Vancouver Island station has bagged as many as five whales in one day,—­Cachalots, Humpbacks, and Sulphur-Bottoms.

The Eskimo say, “There is no part of a seal that is not good,” and the same applies to whales.  Blubber and bone have their regular markets.  The viscera, scraps of fat and oddments tried out in fiery furnaces, appear in the form of pungent snuff-like powder, a much-sought fertiliser.  From the Vancouver Island stations it goes across to enrich the cane-fields of Honolulu and the rose-gardens of Nippon.  The Japs are eager customers for the dried or smoked whale-meat; and whale-steak broiled to a turn can scarcely be distinguished from choice porterhouse, since it is absolutely free from fishy taste.  Far back in