It was hardly six o’clock in the morning when the wail of the ship’s siren whistle shot into the deep mountain valley where the station of the (former) Pacific Whaling Company is located at the one-time Indian village of Sechart. With a great deal of curiosity I strained my eyes through the fog to study the group of white frame buildings which straggled up from the water’s edge back into the valley. [Illustration: Captain Balcom at the gun on the _Orion_. ] I could see only one or two Indians, clad in dirty shirts and overalls, loafing about placidly staring at the ship, but by the time she had been warped in and the winch had started to swing aboard the great oil casks which lined the wharf, two pleasant-faced men appeared, one of whom I learned was Mr. Quinton, the station manager; to him my letters were presented. With him was Mr. Rolls, the secretary of the station, who showed me to a room at the house. I got out of my “store clothes” and came down to the wharf, now lined with men of six nationalities—for Norwegians, Americans, Newfoundlanders, Indians, Chinese, and Japanese are employed at these west coast stations. Tied up to the side of the pier was the ship _Orion_. She was typical of all steam whalers, had been built in Norway and made, under her own steam, the long stormy passage across the Atlantic to Newfoundland. A few years of work there and she started for the Pacific around the Horn, beating her way northward to the scene of her present work at Sechart. The _Orion_ had not gone to sea that morning, for the fog outside made it useless to hunt; even if the ship could have kept her bearings in the mist it would have been impossible to see the spout of a whale, or to follow the animal if one were found. The crew were all ashore, and I met Captain Balcom, an alert young Canadian, and one of the few successful gunners who was not a Norwegian. He offered at once to take me “outside” with him when the weather cleared but said we would see only humpbacks, for the blue whales and finbacks had not yet appeared on these hunting grounds. At Kyuquot, a station only one hundred miles farther up the coast, blue whales and finbacks were taken with the humpbacks in March as soon as the station opened, while at Sechart they did not come until July. When the station was first located at Sechart, humpbacks were frequently taken in Barclay Sound but were soon all killed, and others did not take their places. At the time I was there, the _Orion_ seldom found whales less than thirty miles at sea. She usually arrived about two o’clock in the morning, dropped her catch, and in half or three-quarters of an hour was again on the way out in order to reach the feeding grounds shortly after daylight.