to mingle with ours to our advantage. An
arrangement was speedily arrived at to give him L20 per tun for whatever
oil he made. They parted on the best of terms with each other, and as
soon as we cut the carcass loose the Maories made fast, to it, speedily
beaching it in a convenient spot near where they had previously erected
a most primitive try-works.

That afternoon, after the head was inboard, the skipper thought he would
go ashore and see how they were getting on. I was so fortunate as to
be able to accompany him. When we arrived at the spot, we found them
working as I have never seen men work, except perhaps the small riggers
that at home take a job--three or four of them--to bend or unbend a
big ship's sails for a lump sum to be paid when the work is done. They
attacked the carcass furiously, as if they had a personal enmity against
it, chopping through the massive bones and rending off huge lumps of
the flesh with marvellous speed. They had already laid open the enormous
cavity of the abdomen, and were stripping the interminable intestines
of their rich coating of fat. In the maw there were, besides a large
quantity of dismembered squid of great size, a number of fish, such as
rock-cod, barracouta, schnapper, and the like, whose presence there was
a revelation to me. How in the name of wonder so huge and unwieldy a
creature as the cachalot could manage to catch those nimble members
of the finny tribe, I could not for the life of me divine! Unless--and
after much cogitation it was the only feasible explanation that I could
see--as the cachalot swims about with his lower jaw hanging down in its
normal position, and his huge gullet gaping like some submarine cavern,
the fish unwittingly glide down it, to find egress impossible. This may
or may not be the case; but I, at any rate, can find no more reasonable
theory, for it is manifestly absurd to suppose the whale capable of
CATCHING fish in the ordinary sense, indicating pursuit.

Every part of the animal yielded oil. Even the bones, broken up into
pieces capable of entering the pot, were boiled; and by the time we had
finished our trying-out, the result of the Maories' labour was ready for
us. Less than a week had sufficed to yield them a net sum of six guineas
each, even at the very low rate for which they sold us the oil. Except
that it was a little darker in colour, a defect that would disappear
when mixed with our store, there was no difference between the pr