This time we laid aside our clothes and wore only strong canvas trousers when we commenced operations, which were vigorously carried on during the whole of the day; then, satisfied that we could do so with a clear conscience, we abandoned the remains to the birds of prey, and, with a full cargo, set sail for land.
On the way, it appeared to strike the boys (who had made not the slightest objection to the singularly unpleasant task I had set them) as very strange that I should wish to possess what they had been working so hard to procure for me.
`What can have made you wish to bring away that brute's entrails, father? Are they of any use?'
`There are countries,' I replied, `where no wood grows of which to make barrels, and no hemp for thread, string and cordage. Necessity, the mother of all the more valuable inventions, has taught the inhabitants of those countries, Greenlanders, Esquimaux and others, to think of substitutes, and they use the intestines of the whale for one purpose, the sinews and nerves for the other.'
We were right glad to land, and get rid, for the present, of our unpleasant materials, the further preparation of which was work in store for the following day.
A refreshing bath, clean clothes, and supper, cheered us all up, and we slept in peace.
Chapter 11
`Now for the finishing up of this dirty job,' cried I, merrily, as we all woke up next morning at daybreak. And after the regular work was done, we commenced operations by raising a stand or rough scaffold on which the tubs full of blubber were placed and heavily pressed, so that the purest and finest oil overflowed into vessels underneath.
The blubber was afterwards boiled in a cauldron over a fire kindled at some distance from our abode, and by skimming and straining through a coarse cloth, we succeeded in obtaining a large supply of excellent train oil, which, in casks and bags made of the intestines, was safely stowed away in the `cellar', as the children called our roughest store-room.
This day's work was far from agreeable, and the dreadful smell oppressed us all, more especially my poor wife, who, nevertheless, endured it with her accustomed good temper. However, she very urgently recommended that the new island should be the headquarters for another colony, where, said she, `any animals we leave would be safe from apes and other plunderers, and where you would find it so very convenient to boil whale-blubber, strain train oil, and the like'.