About this time I shot a curious specimen—­too large for stuffing—­a grampus.  I was in my boat one day fishing for whiting, when I heard a peculiar noise behind me, and looking round, saw a huge monster rise from the sea about a hundred yards off, and make straight for me.  Before getting to the boat he dived again and again, when I saw that it was apparently a young whale.  Instinctively I clutched my gun, and as the monster dived within a dozen yards of my boat I watched its rising; up he came, not twenty feet away, whereupon I let him have both barrels at the back of his head, and to my surprise he immediately turned over, belly upward, gave a shudder, and was dead.  I took my prize in tow, and found on landing that it was upwards of ten feet long, and must have weighed several hundredweight, for out of the water it was perfectly unmanageable.  I had to yoke “Eddy” and myself together, and drag the monster above high water-mark, till I decided what to do with it.

In the morning I took off the skin, which would have made excellent leather, but I had no means of tanning it, so was jettisoned.  Beneath the skin was a thick layer of blubber, and this I flayed off, making myself in a pretty pickle, and soon had a large pile of this reeking adipose deposit.  Then I brought my copper on the beach, as it was a portable one, and lighting a fire I “tryed,” or boiled my blubber down and had several gallons to bottle by the end of the day.

The flesh, I believe, is eatable, but it looked so dark and rich that I was afraid to cook a piece and try it.  Grampus is, no doubt, all very well for shipwrecked mariners, but as I had plenty of other food the carcase followed the skin into the sea.  As it glided into the rough water the oil exuded, and made a large patch of calm water as smooth as a mill-pond.

This gave me a splendid idea for using the oil.  For the future I would always take some with me on my boating expeditions!  I did, and put it in a bottle which I kept near the bows, and whenever I got into difficulties near rocks or in a rough sea I could command a calm.  This power I used on many occasions, and with invariable success.  For instance, if my lines got foul in a choppy sea, I could make the sea calm, and get my gear out of tangle capitally, which, with the pitching of my craft and the “send” of the following waves, would have otherwise been a nearly hopeless task.  Another use I put the oil to was to pour some on my fish pond and bring the surface to a perfect calm; then I could study my fish as well as if they were simply under a sheet of glass, while by lying flat down on the margin of the pool, with my face near the water, I could see even the most minute object on the bottom.  Looking into this pool was to me like looking into another world.  Once when very intent upon the doings of some spider-crabs, the rock upon which I leaned my chest and hands gave way beneath my weight, and I was immediately transformed into a fish, or at any rate, for some moments I was an occupant of the same element and abode as the fish; but I soon scrambled out without even a crab or lobster taking the opportunity of tweaking my nose.