On the fourth day after leaving port we were all busy as usual except the four men in the “crow’s-nests,” when a sudden cry of “Porps! porps!” brought everything to a standstill.  A large school of porpoises had just joined us, in their usual clownish fashion, rolling and tumbling around the bows as the old barky wallowed along, surrounded by a wide ellipse of snowy foam.  All work was instantly suspended, and active preparations made for securing a few of these frolicsome fellows.  A “block,” or pulley, was hung out at the bowsprit end, a whale-line passed through it and “bent” (fastened) on to a harpoon.  Another line with a running “bowline,” or slip-noose, was also passed out to the bowsprit end, being held there by one man in readiness.  Then one of the harpooners ran out along the backropes, which keep the jib-boom down, taking his stand beneath the bowsprit with the harpoon ready.  Presently he raised his iron and followed the track of a rising porpoise with its point until the creature broke water.  At the same instant the weapon left his grasp, apparently without any force behind it; but we on deck, holding the line, soon found that our excited hauling lifted a big vibrating body clean out of the smother beneath. “’Vast hauling!” shouted the mate, while as the porpoise hung dangling, the harpooner slipped the ready bowline over his body, gently closing its grip round the “small” by the broad tail.  Then we hauled on the noose-line, slacking away the harpoon, and in a minute had our prize on deck.  He was dragged away at once and the operation repeated.  Again and again we hauled them in, until the fore part of the deck was alive with the kicking, writhing sea-pigs, at least twenty of them.  I had seen an occasional porpoise caught at sea before, but never more than one at a time.  Here, however, was a wholesale catch.  At last one of the harpooned ones plunged so furiously while being hauled up that he literally tore himself off the iron, falling, streaming with blood, back into the sea.

Away went all the school after him, tearing at him with their long well-toothed jaws, some of them leaping high in the air in their eagerness to get their due share of the cannibal feast.  Our fishing was over for that time.  Meanwhile one of the harpooners had brought out a number of knives, with which all hands were soon busy skinning the blubber from the bodies.  Porpoises have no skin, that is hide, the blubber or coating of lard which encases them being covered by a black substance as thin as tissue paper.  The porpoise hide of the boot maker is really leather, made from the skin of the beluga, or “white whale,” which is found only in the far north.  The cover was removed from the “tryworks” amidships, revealing two gigantic pots set in a frame of brickwork side by side, capable of holding 200 gallons each.  Such a cooking apparatus as might have graced a Brobdingnagian kitchen.  Beneath the pots was the very simplest