Scores of the big, graceful creatures had been disporting themselves around the ship for several hours, as many as a dozen sometimes simultaneously breaking the water in a space which apparently could have been covered with a table-cloth. By and by they aroused the blood-loving propensities of the mate, who forthwith rigged his harpoon and stationed himself on the bowsprit-shrouds to watch for his prey. Presently a dolphin shot under the martingale-boom, when zip, the heavy iron flew through the air and passed completely through the unhappy creature, whose blood instantly transformed the lovely blue of the sea to a rich crimson. Here Mr. Goggins showed indications of insanity and bawled for the watch, who came running up on the forecastle-head with beaming faces. A dozen hands seized the harpoon-line, and a few hearty pulls landed the dolphin alongside the starboard anchor amid the wildest acclamations from the men. As he was to furnish fresh food for them for several days, however, their joy was natural, and he was dragged down on the main deck, cleaned, and skinned, which latter process was accomplished by slitting the hide into longitudinal sections, and then, starting each strip, three hands would take a strong hold and with a hard wrench the strip or ribbon would be ripped off with a noise like the tearing of heavy silk; one of the men, the facetious Charley Neilsen, suggesting the propriety of starting a chanty. After this had been accomplished, the carcass was suspended from the mainstay, bearing a singular resemblance to a hind-quarter of beef. This morning we had dolphin liver for breakfast, which could scarcely have been detected from calf’s liver, and this, with some new-laid eggs and salt mackerel, afforded us much the same breakfast which we would have had ashore. “And the flesh you won’t know from beef; eh, cap’n?” said Mr. Goggins. But we hardly believed this and our distrust was justified when a strange dish was placed before the skipper at dinner. “What on earth is that?” I asked. “Oh, this is a dolphin stew,” quoth Captain Scruggs, with much satisfaction, “and that’s just pork fat on top to flavor it.” Whatever it was, the thing was in a deep yellow dish and looked like a wretched meat pie, the slabs of pork taking the place of crust. But yet stranger things were to be disclosed; for when the captain inserted a spoon and sculled around in the recesses of the cavernous redoubt, he brought to light and placed upon our plates irregular lumps of what seemed to be coke, while some of the fragments were of that dead black that pitch assumes, smooth in places, and in others sharp and ragged. I can assure the reader that a dolphin ragout is a strange thing.