From the schooner’s deck, a mile and a half away, Captain, cook, and cooper--the head, tail, and midriff of the ship’s company--we perceive that the white puff of spray from the whale’s blowholes has changed to a darker color. “Spouting blood,” we remark. The boat is lying quite near by. At intervals of a few minutes a circular streak of white water is seen breaking the smooth surface of the lagoon. He’s in his “flurry.” He is dying. It is a mighty death, a wonderful escape of vitality and power, affection, and intelligence, too, and all from the mere pin’s prick of an implement in the hands of yon meddlesome, cruel, audacious, greedy, unfeeling pigmies. Spouting blood, bleeding its huge life away, shivering in great convulsions, means only for us forty barrels more of grease, and a couple of hundred pounds of bone to manufacture death-dealing, rib-compressing, liver-squeezing corsets from. And all the while the calf lingers by the dying mother’s side, wondering what it is all about. Dead and with laborious stroke towed to the vessel, the calf swims in its wake. Made fast alongside, its beautifully symmetrical bulk tapering from head to tail in lines which man copies in the mould of his finest yachts, the body remains all night, and in the still hours of the “anchor watch” we can hear the feeble “blow” of the poor calf, as it swims to and fro. In the morning the mass which last night was but a couple of feet out of water, has swollen and risen almost to the level of the low bulwark’s top, while the gas generated by the decomposition within escapes from each lance puncture with a faint sizzle. With the earliest light the crew are at work. Skin and fat are torn off in great strips and hoisted on board. Round and round the carcass is slowly turned, with each turn another coil of blubber is unwound and cut off. The sharks are busy, too. Monsters (I use the term “monsters” merely for the sake of euphony, not liking to repeat the word “shark” so often) fifteen and eighteen feet long rush up to the carcass, tear off great pieces of the beefy-looking flesh and then quarrel with each other for its possession, flirting the water with nose and fin, and getting occasionally a gash from a sharp whale-spade which would take a man’s head off. Amid all this, men shouting, swearing, singing, the windlass clanking, fires under the try-pots blazing, black smoke whirling off in clouds, sharks grabbing and fighting and being fought, the motherless calf still swims about the mutilated carcass, and when cast adrift, a whity-yellowish mass of carrion, swept hither and thither by wind and tide, it still keeps it company until dead of starvation or mercifully devoured by the “monsters.” Madame, every bone in your corset groans with the guilt of this double murder.