know my own voice as the wonderful words sounded clearly in the still air; but if ever a small body of soul-hardened men felt the power of God, it was then.  At the words, “We therefore commit his body to the deep,” I paused, and, the mate making a sign, two of the harpooners tilted the hatch, from which the remains slid off into the unknown depths with a dull splash.  Several of the dead man’s compatriots covered their faces, and murmured prayers for the repose of his soul, while the tears trickled through their horny fingers.  But matters soon resumed their normal course; the tension over, back came the strings of life into position again, to play the same old tunes and discords once more.

The captured whale made an addition to our cargo of one hundred and ten barrels—­a very fair haul indeed.  The harpooners were disposed to regard this capture as auspicious upon opening the North Pacific, where, in spite of the time we had spent, and the fair luck we had experienced in the Indian Ocean, we expected to make the chief portion of our cargo.

Our next cruising-ground is known to whalemen as the “Coast of Japan” ground, and has certainly proved in the past the most prolific fishery of sperm whales in the whole world.  I am inclined now to believe that there are more and larger cachalots to be found in the Southern Hemisphere, between the parallels of 33deg. and 50deg.  South; but there the drawback of heavy weather and mountainous seas severely handicaps the fishermen.

It is somewhat of a misnomer to call the Coast of Japan ground by that name, since to be successful you should not sight Japan at all, but keep out of range of the cold current that sweeps right across the Pacific, skirting the Philippines, along the coasts of the Japanese islands as far as the Kuriles, and then returns to the eastward again to the southward of the Aleutian Archipelago.  The greatest number of whales are always found in the vicinity of the Bonin and Volcano groups of islands, which lie in the eddy formed by the northward bend of the mighty current before mentioned.  This wonderful ground was first cruised by a London whale-ship, the syren, in 1819, when the English branch of the sperm whale-fishery was in its prime, and London skippers were proud of the fact that one of their number, in the Emilia, had thirty-one years before first ventured around Cape Horn in pursuit of the cachalot.

After the advent of the syren, the Bonins became the favourite fishing-ground for both Americans and British, and for many years the catch of oil taken from these teeming waters averaged four thousand tuns annually.  That the value of the fishery was maintained at so high a level for over a quarter of a century was doubtless due to the fact that there was a long, self-imposed close season, during which the whales were quite unmolested.  Nothing in the migratory habits of this whale, so far as has ever been observed, would have prevented a profitable fishing all the year round; but custom, stronger even than profit, ordained that whale-ships should never stay too long upon one fishing-ground, but move on farther until the usual round had been made, unless the vessel were filled in the mean time.