Night overtook us while we were engaged in the work, and watch and watch we continued it, lest a gale might spring up and compel us to abandon our prize before it was all secured. No scene could be wilder or more unearthly than that presented during the night by the whaler's decks. The lurid fires surrounding the seething caldrons cast a red glare on all around--on the masts and rigging of the ship, enveloped in the dense wreaths of smoke which ascended from them--on the sturdy forms of the seamen, with their muscular arms bared to the shoulder. Some were cutting off huge blanket-pieces; others chopping them small on the horses; others throwing them into the pots, or with long poles stirring the boiling fluid, or raking out the scraps, as the refuse is called, to feed the flames; while others, again, were drawing off the oil into the casks ready to receive it, and stowing them away in the hold. The whole of the following day and the following night found us employed in a similar manner. At last the whole carcass was stripped to the very flukes of every particle of blubber, and, to our no little satisfaction, cast loose to float away, and to become a feast for the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. The head, full of the valuable spermaceti, was now floated alongside. A bucket was then forced down through the neck; by means of a long pole, into the case, till, by repeated dips, it was entirely emptied of its contents; and, as Knowles predicted, the case was found to contain even more than a ton of oil. The spermaceti was carefully boiled by itself--an operation necessary to preserve it. The blubber surrounding the head was also taken off and boiled down, and the empty skull was then cast loose, and sunk, by its own weight, with rapidity to the bottom--there, perhaps, to form the caverned abode of some marine monster never yet seen by human eye. It took us nearly three days to cut-in, try-out, and stow away that huge whale, the produce altogether being no less than eighty-five barrels! We broke forth into loud shouts when our work was accomplished and our first fish stowed away. I have no great sympathy with those who talk of the cruelty of the work. A whale feels acutely, no doubt, and so does a mouse or a sparrow, when wounded; but not having huge bodies to twist and turn about in their agony, they do not appear to suffer so much as does the mighty monarch of the deep. I suspect that the amount of pain felt by the small animal is equally great with that felt by the large one. However, I would make my argument a plea for merciful treatment of all alike, and urge that pain should never be unnecessarily inflicted on even the smallest of created beings in whose nostrils is the breath of life.