The Old Whaling Life.

Now and again one meets a man whose life narrative is a breath of the real adventure more absorbing than any novel. I talked the other day with an old-timer of the North who had commanded whaling crews in the heroic days when the hunters of the greatest sea-game tackled the sperm whale in their small boats and fought it with hand-hurled harpoon and lance. The scientific mass-slaughter of to-day, when huge factory ships and gun-armed killing steamers make havoc in the Southern Seas, was undreamed of in his time. This Auckland veteran of the sea is George Howe Cook, who comes of a notable part-Maori pioneering family; with a New Zealand history extending over more than a century. He is eighty-two, but he does not look more than sixty, if that.

Long, lean, spry, with a quiet air of confidence and decision, and an often humorous glint in his wise, keen eyes, Mr. Cook looks the kind of man who could wrestle with any emergency and take the lead in any enterprise calling for quick decision.