We could not see the reported land from the deck for two hours after it was first seen from aloft, although the odd spectacle of a scattered group of cocoa-nut trees apparently growing out of the sea was for some time presented to us before the island itself came into view.  It was Christmas Island, where the indefatigable Captain Cook landed on December 24, 1777, for the purpose of making accurate observations of an eclipse of the sun.  He it was who gave to this lonely atoll the name it has ever since borne, with characteristic modesty giving his own great name to a tiny patch of coral which almost blocks the entrance to the central lagoon.  Here we lay “off and on” for a couple of days, while foraging parties went ashore, returning at intervals with abundance of turtle and sea-fowls’ eggs.  But any detailed account of their proceedings must be ruthlessly curtailed, owing to the scanty limits of space remaining.

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CHAPTER XIX

EDGING SOUTHWARD

The line whaling grounds embrace an exceedingly extensive area, over the whole of which sperm whales may be found, generally of medium size.  No means of estimating the probable plenty or scarcity of them in any given part of the grounds exist, so that falling in with them is purely a matter of coincidence.  To me it seems a conclusive proof of the enormous numbers of sperm whales frequenting certain large breadths of ocean, that they should be so often fallen in with, remembering what a little spot is represented by a day’s cruise, and that the signs which denote almost infallibly the vicinity of right whales are entirely absent in the case of the cachalot.  In the narrow waters of the Greenland seas, with quite a small number of vessels seeking, it is hardly possible for a whale of any size to escape being seen; but in the open ocean a goodly fleet may cruise over a space of a hundred thousand square miles without meeting any of the whales that may yet be there in large numbers.  So that when one hears talk of the extinction of the cachalot, it is well to bear in mind that such a thing would take a long series of years to effect, even were the whaling business waxing instead of waning, While, however, South Sea whaling is conducted on such old-world methods as still obtain; while steam, with all the power it gives of rapidly dealing with a catch, is not made use of, the art and mystery of the whale-fisher must continually decrease.  No such valuable lubricant has ever been found as sperm oil; but the cost of its production, added to the precarious nature of the supply, so handicaps it in the competition with substitutes that it has been practically eliminated from the English markets, except in such greatly adulterated forms as to render it a lie to speak of the mixture as sperm oil at all.