We got ashore at last and “41” and the Juan Fernado, the interpreter, revived and spoke again as we got into smoother water.
We climbed up the cliffs in the late afternoon and “41” had to explain to José, the major-domo of the hotel, why we did not stay out all night, as we at first intended to do—“No room in boat,” etc., etc., he said, and José smiled his genial smile and said: “Told you so, told you so, eet ees dee same ding always, gentlemen do come back so; dey not like de smell of de feesh, dey say.”
Now there is the moon again, I declare! I began this chapter by its silvery light before dawn, and now it appears again as I wind up my notes at night; it surely has done its round at an unusual pace; it seems to me only a minute or two since it went down in the west, ruddy as a new penny—it had only a small gallery then—mostly fisher folk; this evening the hotel people are all watching it from a verandah; they will be late for dinner, so beautiful is its yellow glory and its track across the sea from the Disertas to the foot of our cliffs. I must make a study of it to-morrow and will need a ruler to draw the black shadows of our masts, so straight are they along the path of gold.
CHAPTER XXII
After killing our first bull sperm off the Azores we killed a few more whales, north of the Line, rorquals and small sperms of no great value. Then, owing to the warm water of the tropics not cooling our engine sufficiently, we had more engine trouble on the voyage from the Line to Cape Town. One day under sail and engine, the next drifting and tinkering at the engine. At the Cape, however, relief came; a Norwegian expert at Diesel motors was sent out and he diagnosed the trouble at once, increased the flow of cooling water, altered the screw slightly and got the St Ebba into splendid trim, and the old engineer, a Swede, went home.
Under sail and motor our little vessel did a record passage up the Mozambique Channel, in heavy weather, past Madagascar to the region of calm seas round the Seychelle Islands, five degrees south of the Line. We would rather have gone south instead of north, to the Crozet Islands, for the sea-elephants which we know are there, but, owing to the last two vessels that called there having been wrecked, insurance rates became prohibitive; so we acted on the alternative plan we had formed in Norway, and went to the Seychelles to find if my old whaling chart said sooth about the sperm there. I had also heard from old whalers that there were many blue whales, and these we knew had never been hunted, and the sperm we counted on having increased in numbers; since the sperm-whaling was almost given up forty years ago. Our forecast was correct; we found both sperm and rorquals in great numbers.
We set to killing and flinching (or flensing) the sperm whales at sea. But we soon realised that for one we killed and flinched at sea we could take and utilise a dozen with a shore station; for the labour, French Creole, on the Seychelles is plentiful and cheap. Besides, we were losing not only much oil, owing to the warmth of the water, but also the use of the bodies of the whales. One of these drifted ashore beneath Government House. It was very high, and we were politely informed that—that was the limit!
So we applied to the Seychelle Government for licences for a large land station in order to utilise both the blubber and the entire bodies of our whales. Licences were granted to us and we purchased the land site for a station; and now we are running our little Company into a large affair, with both British and Norwegian Directors and capital, and the station is being prepared—a complete land station, to work with several whaling steamers; capable of turning out, by the latest processes and modern machinery, several hundred barrels of oil and bags of guano per day, the guano being produced from the whale’s bones and meat after all oil has been extracted.