Simultaneously with the upward leap of the sun four voices rang out in the thrilling cry of “Blo-o-o-o-w.” Indeed it was a stirring sight. Far as the eye could reach from horizon to horizon there appeared to be bursting from the sea an endless succession of jets of smoke, each one denoting the presence of a monster sperm whale. Only twice in my life have I ever seen such a sight, once off the Solander Rock, Foveaux Straits, New Zealand, and there the horizon was restricted by land on two sides, and once when on a passage to Gibraltar from London in the P. & O. ss. Arabia, Captain Parfitt, who, if he sees these lines, will doubtless remember that the previous day at dinner we had had a slight controversy about the quantity of whales now to be seen at sea. I held that whales were more plenti
