We picked up and secured the wrecks of our boats and gear, while the whale was hauled alongside the Fortitude. It was agreed that Captain Wyer should cut and boil him, and we would divide the oil in Talcahuana, as we both expected to be there soon. We bought a boat of the Fortitude, rigged the spare one overhead, and thus were enabled to lower the complement of three. We stretched across to Massafuera and back, cruising between the two islands, till one more large whale rewarded our efforts; and bore away for the rendezvous, our consort having left the ground the day before. The cooper had added one to his stock of yarns which would require but little embellishment to make it marvellous. Mr. Grafton and Fisher were converts to the "eating whale" theory; and "the doctor" listened with delight as we rehearsed the incidents of the capture of "the Juan Fernandez whale;" displaying, as he listened, an array of ivory almost as formidable as that of the redoubtable whale himself. CHAPTER XIII. TALCAHUANA. We passed the Fortitude, tack and tack, beating up to the anchorage of Talcahuana, and let go our anchors nearly at the same moment. Fifty-five barrels was our share of "the Juan Fernandez whale," which made us up to two hundred and thirty, all told; not so bad a start, as we were hardly five months from home. Talcahuana, or "Turkeywarner," as old Jeff and the cook persisted in Anglicizing the name, is like many other places on the Spanish Main, merely the port to a large city; the cities along this coast being pushed up into mountains, at a considerable distance from the seaboard. The place itself is not much to look at, or to discourse about. A description would present no points of marked interest to the general reader, and what whaleman needs a description of Talcahuana? Here were anchored some dozen or fifteen whaleships, mostly from Nantucket and New Bedford; some lately from home bringing letters for those long absent, while two or three were making their last port homeward-bound, and ready to take the answering epistles; for at that time the process of annihilation of time and space which has made such strides within the last quarter of a century, was, comparatively speaking, in its infancy. Yankee enterprise had not yet pushed its way over the Sierras, and the ponchoed Mexican still lounged at his ease, and drawled his _quien sabe?_ where now great commercial cities have started up as if by magic. No ocean steamers then vexed the waters of "the Gulf" and the Caribbean; overland mails were rather a "proposed" innovation than a fixed fact, and the electric telegraph was as yet hidden in the womb of time. To us in the Pacific, news from home even a year old was heartily welcomed; while the advent of a whaler five or six months out was a perfect windfall.