is buried in it up to the hilt. We are close to the poor creature's head, and it turns up its meek eyes in a way to rouse pity in any tender heart. But save our friend and ourselves, there are no hearts in that boat to be troubled with the mute appeal of a whale's eye. Baring his arm to the shoulder, the Sysselmand scores the creature's throat in long gashes with demoniac energy. Torrents of blood follow, and the crisp white coat of blubber, which when cut looks more like a watermelon than animal flesh, is soon cut through; then the hand and the arm must be plunged in up to the elbow to reach the whale's true flesh. In a trice its throat is cut; its frantic efforts to escape, during which it hurries us along with it fast grappled to its side, gradually cease; it turns a little on its side, gives a fling with its tail, and dies. After death the carcass must still be held, as it is whale's nature to sink as soon as the breath is out of its body. It is therefore either buoyed and turned adrift, or handed over to some non-fighting boat to tow on shore. While this has been passing on board our boat, the same thing has been going on with thirty other boats. No wonder that the blue waters of the firth are now deeply stained with blood. Sometimes the whales if unskilfully grappled, break loose and plunge wildly about the water, spouting out, if sore-stricken, water mingled with their life-blood. In one or two cases the scared wretches swim straight on shore, pushing themselves high up on the beach, for there are no shallows here, and it is deep water right up to the edge. But even on land they cannot escape their cruel foe, there are men there ready waiting to cut up the bodies of the slain, who welcome the new-comers with a savage greeting as soon as they set fin on land. Among the boats there are many cases of running down, and in Great Britain many a case of salvage would arise out of those collisions, but here the result is much cursing and abuse, and no bones are broken. The great peril which our friend so much dreaded does happen but not to us; near us a smaller boat is suddenly charged by a whale who rushes at it, dives and upsets it as he passes under it. We would give much to know if that brave fellow made his escape, if so we hope he will live to a green old age, and never seek the to whales inhospitable shores of Faroe again. As for the crew of the capsized boat no one seems to care much about them, but much anxiety is expressed lest the whale should get off. The men swim to their boat which has been righted for them, a shove or two helps them into it, and in a minute they are as eagerly engaged in the fray as before. How do we behave? Splendidly, of course. At first we pity the whales, but the sight under such circumstances soon ceases to be sickening,

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and as we grapple with our third whale we beg the Sysselmand to let us cut the mammal's throat. And cut it we do or at least try to do so, but our arm is not as the Sysselmand's arm, nor our heart as hardened as his. We should have cut the whale's throat at last, and we feel a fiendish joy as the sharp knife cuts long gashes in the crisp blubber; but we should have been too long about it, so the Sysselmand takes it away from us and shows us how to do it. No doubt the whale felt more at ease in giving up the ghost under such a skilful hand, and felt hurt, morally hurt, at our bungling. On looking back to our friend in the stern we see him brandishing his knife in a way which gives us great fears for the safety of his nose. But he too has felt the cruel thirst for blood, and his flannel-shirt is blood-besprinkled. In his left hand he holds the tip of a whale's tail which he has cut off as the creature dived alongside. He is as proud of it as a Red Indian of his first scalp. All fear of death has fled. He no longer thinks of making his will, and his wrath against the whole race of whales is hot. "I would not be a whale for something to-day," he shouts as he holds up his trophy, and yet one might learn something even from whales. The patience with which they meet their fate is wonderful, when they feel that struggling is no use. So might many a man learn to die without repining. Most touching too is the behaviour of the mothers who hug their calves, and shield them all they can from the bitter knife. "Bairns will still be bairns," says the proverb, and so it is with whale-bairns. They seem to think it fine fun to frisk about at the top of the water-till they are harpooned. They never think of diving and ducking till it is too late; but the mothers' hearts are set first on saving their children before they save themselves, and many a whale-wife would have got clear off this day had it not been for their motherly love. So the bloody massacre goes on for more than an hour, at the end of which time about 140 whales have bitten the water, and but two or three are left still cooped up. "Shall we spare them?" I ask imploringly of the Sysselmand. "Spare them," he replies with scorn, "why, haven't fifty at least got off and cheated us? Spare them, I trow not, and look there is the parson after the biggest, forty feet long at least. Förbanna, Förbanna, pull men, pull. Ha! the parson launches his harpoon and misses, give way, boys, we are alongside." Thud, Thud, goes the Sysselmand's harpoon into the whale. The parson comes up a minute afterwards, only to find us fast grappled to our quarry, and that he has lost it. Whether he utters the cabalistic word "Förbanna" we cannot hear in the uproar which quite "deaves" us, but we think it not unlikely. There are now but two whales left, one of which again falls

before the harpoon of the relentless Sysselmand. The last was also slain, whether by the parson we know not; and now naught remains but the blue sky and green hills and merry waterfall running down to meet the "multitudinous sea incar- ́ nadined." Blood-red are the waves, and blood-stained the men and boats that float on them. With slower strokes than when we set out, we seek the shore, to reckon the dead and count the gains. That is a proud moment for our friend as the women of the farm hard by shake him warmly by the hand, and call him "British whale-slayer." His tail-fin is an introduction everywhere. Side by side on the steep beach lay the dead, young and old, male and female, stiff and stark, sorely scarred and gashed with gaping wounds from which the gore still trickles down into the sea. The biggest is about forty-five feet long and the smallest seem mere baby-whales. "Yes," slowly repeats our friend, " today at least I am very glad I am not a whale." From which we gather that some other day perhaps he would like to be a whale, though what he would do if he were one, and how he would bear a life exposed to such risks, and so different from that he has passed hitherto in his easy-chair, it is hard to say. On the whole, we would rather not be a whale-no, not even a spermaceti whale-at any time, or in any part of the world. It must be a cold-blooded thing for a warm-blooded mammal to live always in the water, and this no doubt is why this madness ever and anon seizes whales of running their noses against dry land, and so losing their lives. Surely they feel that their true station is that of a saurian splashing about in fen and marsh, and suckling their young on shore. They feel that they were meant for better things, that they have lost caste by taking to the water, the rest of whose inhabitants, the seaserpent included, call out to the little whales as they swim by : "No child of mine." "Aint you afraid of getting your fins wet?" "Mind you don't take cold." 'Why don't you wear a comforter or a hareskin on your chest?" "Where does your mother buy her milk?" "Has your father any roe?" "Does he like caviare?" and a whole string of such idle "gibes and jeers." That we say is why whales rush so blindly every now and then on dry land, because they have known better days, and can't bear the mockery of their scaly foes, who look on them merely as lodgers but not sea-lords in the mighty deep.

The night after the whale-hunt is one of great mirth and jollity. Even the schoolmaster would have drunk to the toast of Free Trade if any one had thought of proposing it, but no one thinks of anything else than whales, and it must be a comfort to the kindred of the departed could they know in what sincere respect and esteem they are held. But we

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draw a veil over the orgies of that night. We would give anything for the head of our friend the Bailie, for every man has seven tumblers and more of punch. Our friend would talk if he could, but as he only knows three words of Danish, "Tak" for thank you, "Portvin" for wine of Oporto, and "Kaffé" for · coffee-two of these being of foreign origin--he is soon au bout de son Latin as the French say, and merely expresses his utmost satisfaction to those about him by nods and winks and smiles. Once he protests to me against the doings of a jolly good fellow near us who has just tossed off his twelfth tumbler of toddy, in each of which he has melted as many lumps of sugar. "He will die of diabetes before dawn, his inside is just a very sugar-mill and rum distillery with only water enough to turn its wheels round." But all things must have an end, and so has this whale feast. We sleep we scarcely know how in a room at the farm, buried under mountains of eider-down. Of course we have the nightmare and whalemare and punchmare. We dream that we are lying in bed, but it is the bed of the mountain torrent close to the farm, and all night through the music of the waterfall is ringing in our ears. Just as we are getting snugly tucked up there, the high fells come down on us on each side and bury us, that is when we sink deeper and deeper under those enormous quilts. Then a giant comes and with one kick casts off the mountains that crush us, that is when our feverish frame cannot stand the quilts any longer and kicks them off. Then a Frost Giant strides off with us to Greenland, wading the ocean which only takes him up to the knee, and hurls us down on the icy fells with such a crash as breaks every bone in our body, that is when getting chilled by the cold draught which comes in at the window prudently left open, we turn over and tumble out of bed on a pile of geological specimens gathered by our friend; it is their sharp points that we take for the Peaks of Greenland. We rise up feeling rather stiff from our exertions of the day before, rather sore from the tumble out of bed, and with just a little headache from the lemons in the punch. All this time our friend sleeps and snores. We are now so used to that feat of the nostrils that it does not disturb us in the least. On the whole we rather like it. Next morning we taste whale for the first time, and being hungry we rather like it broiled; but it is black and bloodylooking, and though we have eaten many worse things-"gammel ost" for instance in Norway, and tripe in England-we have also eaten many better dishes, and do not much care to taste it again. All that day the "flinching" properly so called, goes on with those cruel long knives, and it is wonderful to see how cleverly the flinchers cut long strips of blubber from the

carcases, and quickly reduce them to skeletons. However much whalekind may have been pleased the night before, their feelings if any lingered near the spot must be hurt this day to see the merciless dissection and mutilation of their dead. We soon have enough of the nasty sight; and as we are not as the Feejees and do not eat the bodies of our foes, or care to see him boiled down if fat enough for oil, we are glad to go back with the Sysselmand to Thorshaven. So we take leave of the lovely shores of Westmannahaven and of the whales, only remarking that none of them young and old are disciples of Mr. Banting, and that there is great room for the spread of his pamphlet in the North Atlantic. "An Earnest Remonstrance to Obese Whales, with a few remarks on the Unhealthiness of Blubber," is a work much needed and may do great good among the cetaceans, though it may stop our supply of oil. A few thousand copies printed on paper made of that famous sea-weed which was to supply the place of cotton, and restored to its native deep, would no doubt be most welcome to every right-thinking whale who might be frightened at finding himself much bigger round the waist than of yore.

At Thorshaven we are received with open arms, and a sort of procession is formed of which we are a part, our friend clutching his tail-fin and wielding his harpoon like a native. Nor is his pride lessened when the Sysselmand informs us that as whale-killers we are entitled to a share of the money made by the boat in the action. So we both receive divers dollars as our prize-money, which we generously hand over to "the Seabathing Infirmary for Stranded Whales," or "the Fund for Distressed Cetaceans," or some such equally praiseworthy charity. Thus our time passes swiftly, and now there are but three days more before the steamer is due. Hitherto I have guided our movements, or rather the Sysselmand has guided them for both of us. For ourselves we look upon the whale-fight as our crowning feat in Faroe, and that day at Westmannahaven as worthy to be marked with a white stone for ever in our mind's calendar. I am gorged with blood and whale-meat like an Esquimo, and would be glad to rest and digest my mental food during these three days; but it is otherwise with our friend, that taste of blood has only whetted his appetite for adventure and he still thirsts for more. I see him engaged in earnest talk with the good Sysselmand, whose eyes brighten as the conversation goes on, and at last he shakes his guest heartily by the hand, and says "We will go. We will go this very night. The weather is just right for it." "It!" what is It?" I soon know. "I have settled with

our good host,"