In this active exercise of real sailor-work, the time, though long for an ordinary passage, passed quickly and pleasantly away, so that when we hauled round the massive promontory guarding the western entrance to Foveaux Straits, we were almost surprised to find ourselves there so soon.

This, then, was the famous and dreaded Solander whaling ground.  Almost in the centre of the wide stretch of sea between Preservation Inlet, on the Middle Island, and the western end of the South, or Stewart’s Island, rose a majestic mass of wave-beaten rock some two thousand feet high, like a grim sentinel guarding the Straits.  The extent of the fishing grounds was not more than a hundred and fifty square miles, and it was rarely that the vessels cruised over the whole of it.  The most likely area for finding whales was said to be well within sight of the Solander Rock itself, but keeping on the western side of it.

It was a lovely day when we first entered upon our cruising ground, a gentle north-east wind blowing, the sky a deep, cloudless blue, so that the rugged outline of Stewart’s Island was distinctly seen at its extreme distance from us.  To the eastward the Straits narrowed rapidly, the passage at the other end being scarcely five miles wide between the well-known harbour of the Bluff, the port of Invercargill, and a long rocky island which almost blocked the strait.  This passage, though cutting off a big corner, not only shortening the distance from the westward considerably, but oftentimes saving outward bounders a great deal of heavy weather off the Snares to the south of Stewart’s Island, is rarely used by sailing-ships, except coasters; but steamers regularly avail themselves of it, being independent of its conflicting currents and baffling winds.

*

CHAPTER XXV

ON THE SOLANDER GROUNDS

Our opening day was an auspicious one.  We had not been within the cruising radius more than four hours before the long-silent; cry of “Blo-o-o-w!” resounded from the mainmast head.  It was a lone whale, apparently of large size, though spouting almost as feebly as a calf.  But that, I was told by the skipper, was nothing to go by down here.  He believed right firmly that there were no small whales to be found in these waters at all.  He averred that in all his experience he had never seen a cow-cachalot anywhere around Stewart’s Island, although, as usual, he did no theorizing as to the reason why.

Eagerly we took to the boats and made for our first fish, setting alongside of him in less than half an hour from our first glimpse of his bushy breath.  As the irons sank into his blubber, he raised himself a little, and exposed a back like a big ship bottom up.  Verily, the skipper’s words were justified, for we had seen nothing bigger of the whale-kind that voyage.  His manner puzzled us not a little.  He had not a kick in him.  Complacently, as though