only anxious to oblige, he laid quietly while we cleared for action, nor did he show any signs of resentment or pain while he was being lanced with all the vigour we possessed.  He just took all our assaults with perfect quietude and exemplary patience, so that we could hardly help regarding him with great suspicion, suspecting some deep scheme of deviltry hidden by this abnormally sheep-like demeanour.  But nothing happened.  In the same peaceful way he died, without the slightest struggle sufficient to raise even an eddy on the almost smooth sea.

Leaving the mate by the carcass, we returned on board, the skipper hailing us immediately on our arrival to know what was the matter with him.  We, of course, did not know, neither did the question trouble us.  All we were concerned about was the magnanimous way in which he, so to speak, made us a present of himself, giving us no more trouble to secure his treasure than as if he had been a lifeless thing.  We soon had him alongside, finding, upon ranging him by the ship, that he was over seventy feet long, with a breadth of bulk quite in proportion to such a vast length.

Cutting-in commenced at once, for fine weather there was by no means to be wasted, being of rare occurrence and liable at the shortest notice to be succeeded by a howling gale.  Our latest acquisition, however, was of such gigantic proportions that the decapitation alone bade fair to take us all night.  A nasty cross swell began to get up, too—­a combination of north-westerly and south-westerly which, meeting at an angle where the Straits began, raised a curious “jobble,” making the vessel behave in a drunken, uncertain manner.  Sailors do not mind a ship rolling or pitching, any more than a rider minds the motion of his horse; but when she does both at once, with no approach to regularity in her movements, it makes them feel angry with her.  What, then, must our feelings have been under such trying conditions, with that mountain of matter alongside to which so much sheer hard labour had to be done, while the sky was getting greasy and the wind beginning to whine in that doleful key which is the certain prelude to a gale?

Everybody worked like Chinamen on a contract, as if there was no such feeling as fatigue.  Little was said, but we all realized that unless this job was got over before what was brooding burst upon us, we should certainly lose some portion of our hard-won whale.  Still, our utmost possible was all we could do; and when at daylight the head was hauled alongside for cutting up, the imminent possibility of losing it, though grievous to think of, worried nobody, for all had done their best.  The gale had commenced in business-like fashion, but the sea was horrible.  It was almost impossible to keep one’s footing on the stage.  At times the whole mass of the head would be sucked down by the lee roll of the ship, and go right under her keel, the fluke-chain which held it grinding and straining as if it would tear the bows out of her.  Then when she rolled back again the head would rebound to the surface right away from the ship, where we could not reach it to cut.  Once or twice it bounced up beneath our feet, striking the stage and lifting it with its living load several inches, letting it fall again with a jerk that made us all cling for dear life to our precarious perch.