“This is the first ambergris,” said Lakeum, “that I ever saw, and I confess that I don’t know how to treat it. What do you say if I ask the crew if any one of them knows anything about taking care of it?”
The captain assented. Only one man responded to the inquiry. It was Kreelman.
“I never was on a whaler that took any ambergris, but a man who was on the _Tiger_, which took a whale in 1848 which had a lump that weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, told me that they made a great mistake. He said that they kept it moist and it kind of spoiled, and he said that, if they had kept it dry, they would have got ten thousand dollars more for it than they did.”
The captain said nothing, and the men were ordered to their tasks. His expression was not pleasant, for it was evident that he did not like a statement, apparently reliable, which ran counter to views he had just expressed. But it is a fact that the ambergris was kept dry during the remainder of the voyage. It took over three days and nights to cut-in, try-out and boil down our leviathan, and stow down the oil. Just before the figures were announced, there was a resumption of the guessing. The best guess was a hundred and nine barrels; the actual yield was one hundred and eleven barrels and four gallons. After the cleaning up, the whale and his product constituted the topic of conversation among the crew for a long time.
In the social hour they made all manner of fun of me, or rather of the prospective watch. One said that the watch would prove to be second-hand; another that it wouldn’t go; a third that when it was wound the noise would be as loud as that made by the winding of a clock; and a fourth that watches of the kind were sold at five dollars the gross. They evidently endeavored to draw me out, but I was silent. Then they took up the ambergris and, in a serious way, began to discuss its value and uses. Several men thought that it was the perfume itself, but Kreelman insisted that it was the substance which prevented evaporation. Then tales were told of the fabulous sums which druggists had paid for the substance and more fabulous tales about the size and weight of various lumps of the article. Then some one asked: