"Then we will have to digress a moment, while I attend to your neglected education," said Little Billy. "Because, from tonight, you will think of ambergris by day, and dream of it by night—ambergris in kegs, oodles of it! I don't suppose your legal training acquainted you with the technical details of the perfume industry?"
"No, I must plead ignorance," conceded Martin.
"Then pay attention," admonished Little Billy. "Ambergris, my friend, is the stuff John Winters calls ambergrease, like the good whaleman he was. It is a waxy substance, very light weight, that forms inside of a sperm whale, and which friend whale belches forth when he gets the colic from feasting too heartily upon squid. Squid, otherwise cuttle-fish, is a horrid monster, all arms and beak, which the cachalot considers a most dainty tidbit. Scientific sharks disagree as to the exact process that forms ambergris, but they all agree that it comes from an overindulgence in squid. Ambergris is very rarely obtained, especially nowadays when the whaling industry is almost dead, and it is actually worth double its weight in gold.
"It is used as a base in the manufacture of the finest perfumes. It is the best perfume base obtainable—it has the virtue of making the odor super-fine and enduring. The demand for it is insistent, and unsatisfied—doubly insistent at the present time, for the supply of the best substitute for ambergris, the sac of the Himalayan musk deer, has also been steadily waning, and has now almost been dried up by the European War. Today there is an almost unlimited market for ambergris, and the lucky seller can command his own price. The stuff is precious. We looked up prices in Frisco and found that forty dollars an ounce will be paid without haggling.
"So now you know what ambergris is, and its connection with the perfume industry. Soon you will see its connection with us. Meanwhile, let us to John Winters's journal again.
"The next relevant entry is five days later, March 31st:
This day we picked up another piece of ambergrease, floating past overside. Silva spotted it, and he gets ten pounds of tobacco as a reward. It weighed ten pounds. The Old Man is very joyous; he says it means good luck. This afternoon we raised two islands, well wooded. Captain Peabody knows these islands. They are uninhabited, and the north one is well watered. Tomorrow we wood and water.
"And then, comes the smashing dénouement, the very next day, April 1, 1890:
This day there did happen to us the like which no whaleman aboard can remember. I will write it down like it happened.
This morning, at dawn, we came through the channel into the lagoon of the north island. It is a very difficult channel. A current sweeps the shore and runs through it like it was a big funnel, and all the driftage hereabouts comes into the lagoon. We let go anchor in ten fathoms, a half mile from the beach.