I shall never forget the intense interest with which I waited for my first sight of a gray whale. On the next day after my arrival at Ulsan I had started across the bay in a sampan to have a look at the village with Mr. Matsumoto, the station paymaster. We had hardly left the shore, when the siren whistle of a whale ship sounded far down the bay and soon the vessel swept around the point into view. At the port bow hung the dark flukes of a whale, the sight of which made me breathe hard with excitement, for one of two things must happen—either I was to find that here was an entirely new species, or else was to rediscover one which had been lost to science for thirty years. Either prospect was alluring enough and as the vessel slowly swung in toward the wharf and a pair of great flukes, the like of which I had never seen before, waved in front of me, I realized that here at last was what I had come half around the world to see. When the winch began slowly to lift the huge black body out of the water, a very short examination told me that the _koku kujira_ really was the long-lost gray whale and not a species new to science. But it was not the gray whale of Scammon’s description, for this white-circled, gray-washed body was very little like the figure he had published in his book, “The Marine Mammalia.” Many new things were learned during the succeeding months of studying this strange animal, but chief among them were the facts that the gray whale differs so strongly from all others that it must be placed in a family of its own; also that it is the most primitive of all existing large cetaceans and is virtually a _living fossil_. CHAPTER XVI HOW KILLERS TEAR OUT A GRAY WHALE’S TONGUE The gray whales, as well as other large cetaceans, have only two enemies—man and one of their own kind, the orca or killer whale. Although twice the size of the killers and correspondingly strong, when one of the orcas appears the devilfish become terrified and either wildly dash for shore or turn belly up at the surface, with fins outspread, paralyzed by fright. A few days after my arrival at Ulsan, three gray whales were brought to the station, one of which had half the tongue torn away; teeth marks clearly showed in the remaining portion and Captain Hurum, who had killed the animals, told me that it was the work of killers.