The captain pressed with the spade, and the intestines opened and disclosed a large substance, which he declared to be ambergris. There was great excitement, and the buzzing reminded me of a gathering of gossipers. While deference, of course, had to be paid to the captain, yet every one had something to say about the preservation and uses of this strange and valuable secretion. The truth is, no one knew anything about ambergris, for a man might spend his life on a whaler without ever seeing a whale which carried a pound of the substance. The captain ordered a large tub to be brought. This was lowered, and a couple of sturdy Portuguese descended and lifted the mass into the receptacle. When it was landed on deck the buzzing was resumed as the inspection proceeded. Every one had to feel of it. It was hard and apparently perfectly formed. Now the truth was, the captain didn’t know any more about ambergris than the foremast hands. Addressing Lakeum, he said, “We shall have to take this stuff home with us, for it’s so valuable I wouldn’t dare ship it, and the question is how best to take care of it. I suppose the best thing to do is to put it in a small cask and head it up and then put the cask into a bigger one filled with water. This will tend to keep it cool and preserve it. What do you think?” “This is the first ambergris,” said Lakeum, “that I ever saw, and I confess that I don’t know how to treat it. What do you say if I ask the crew if any one of them knows anything about taking care of it?” The captain assented. Only one man responded to the inquiry. It was Kreelman. “I never was on a whaler that took any ambergris, but a man who was on the _Tiger_, which took a whale in 1848 which had a lump that weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, told me that they made a great mistake. He said that they kept it moist and it kind of spoiled, and he said that, if they had kept it dry, they would have got ten thousand dollars more for it than they did.” The captain said nothing, and the men were ordered to their tasks. His expression was not pleasant, for it was evident that he did not like a statement, apparently reliable, which ran counter to views he had just expressed. But it is a fact that the ambergris was kept dry during the remainder of the voyage. It took over three days and nights to cut-in, try-out and boil down our leviathan, and stow down the oil. Just before the figures were announced, there was a resumption of the guessing. The best guess was a hundred and nine barrels; the actual yield was one hundred and eleven barrels and four gallons. After the cleaning up, the whale and his product constituted the topic of conversation among the crew for a long time.