It is questionable whether man’s condition has been physically improved by the process of evolution. He may have lost more than he has gained. A monkey can well afford to scorn the relatively clumsy evolutions of the most skilful human brother acrobat. Marguerita Bay was the nursery of the female whales, or in whaler’s parlance, “cows.” The long, quiet lagoons, fringed with green, their waters warmed by the sun to a most agreeable temperature, were the resort during the spring months of the mother whales to bring forth and nurse their young. The bulls generally remained outside. The cows were killed with tolerable ease in the shoal waters of the bay. Outside they have, on being struck, the reputation of running out all the line a boat can spare and then demanding more. Grant could never have fought it out on one line with a “California Gray.” In the lagoons, so long as the calf was uninjured, the mother would slow her own pace, so as to remain by her young. Thus she became an easy sacrifice. If the calf was wounded, woe to the boat’s crew. The cow seemed to smell the blood the moment it was drawn from its offspring. The first time this happened--the boat-steerer accidentally slipping his lance into the calf--the cow turned and chased the boat ashore. The tables were turned. The miserable pigmies, who dared strike Leviathan’s child, were saved because their boat could float where Mrs. Whale couldn’t. She drew at least seven feet of water. A whale is one of the few things read of that is bigger than it looks. The pigmies hauled the boat upon the beach, while the whale for full half an hour swam to and fro where her soundings were safe, and embargoed them. It was, with her, “Come off if you dare.” But they didn’t care to dare, and finally she went away unkilled. She managed, at the start to give the boat one crack, enough to fill it with water. But whaleboats are made to be broken. A few hours’ work and the insertion of a few bits of wood in the light clinker-built sides will restore a whaleboat which, to an inexperienced eye, looks fit only for kindling-wood. A whale is much more of an animal than people generally imagine. There’s a great deal of affection somewhere in that big carcass. I have seen them close aboard from the schooner’s deck play with their young and roll and thrash about in mammoth gambols. They knew the doors to these lagoons leading out into the ocean as well as men know the doors to their houses. When struck, though miles distant, they made straight for that door, and if not killed before reaching it they escaped, for no boat, when fast, could be towed through the huge Pacific breakers. Pigmy man in such case sullenly cut his line and sulkily rowed back to his crowded little schooner to growl at the cook.