As Jim lingered to talk with Tom before the latter’s home, Mr. Chester drove up in his car, and instantly the two boys told him the wonderful news of the bark.
“Yes, boys, I heard about it,”’ he replied. “Mr. Nye was in the office to-day to see about outfitting. He’s fitting the Hector out for a voyage to the South Shetlands for sea elephant oil. Come in and have dinner with us, Jimmy, and I’ll tell you both all about it.”
“Gosh, that’s way down by the South Pole,” exclaimed Jim as the two boys followed Tom’s father into the house. “Say, Tom, what are sea elephants? You never told us anything about them.”
“I don’t exactly know myself,” admitted the other. “Seems to me I did read something about them in some book; sort of a giant seal, I think, but I don’t understand how a whaler can go after them for oil.”
Tom’s father, however, soon explained all about sea elephants, the gigantic seal-like creatures with trunklike noses, which dwell in the Antarctic seas and upon the desolate islands there.
Formerly, Mr. Chester told them, the sea elephants congregated in herds of countless thousands upon the shores of the South Shetlands, Kerguelan, the Croisettes and other Antarctic islands, but as they were stupid creatures and had never seen men, they fell an easy prey to whalers who killed them for their blubber. So rapidly were they slaughtered that they would soon have become as extinct as the Dodo or the Great Auk, if the European governments, who owned the islands, had not taken steps to protect them and prevent hunting them.
“Then how can the Hector go after them?” asked Tom.
“Because, owing to the war, there has been such a shortage of oil that the British government has given permission to hunt them under special license,” replied Mr. Chester.
“Do you really think the old bark ever will get there?” asked Jim.
“I haven’t a doubt of it—unless she’s sunk by a submarine. Those old ships were built to last forever, as Captain Pem says, and Nye’s had the Hector looked over and her timbers and most of her planking are sound. It will be a far more difficult matter to find a crew than to get the bark into seagoing shape.”