THE GAM 
 
 Whaling Stories 
 
 Capt CHAS. H. ROBBINS 
 
Vt . I . 
 
THE GAM 
 
 BEING A GROUP OF WHALING STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 CAPT. CHARLES HENRY ROBBINS, 
 
 REVISED EDITION. 
 
 tout) Jlluatrattons. 
 
 SALEM, MASS.: 
 
 ^EWCOMB & GAUSS 
 
 1913 
 
Copyright, 1899, 
 
 NEWCOMB & GAUSS, Printers 
 Salem, Mass. 
 
THE WHALEMAN STATUE. 
 Gift of Hon. William W. Crapo to the city of New Bedford. 
 

 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I HAVE for many years wondered that the romantic and 
 exciting experiences of the whale fishery have not been 
 preserved more often in records in our literature. Occa 
 sionally we have had sketches of one or another detail in 
 this marvellous adventure. But it would seem as if the 
 brave men who engage in such adventure handle harpoons 
 more willingly than they handle pens. And so you shall 
 hear many a story of such adventure told by men who 
 speak of what they have seen, while you do not read one 
 such story. I was very glad, therefore, to hear that Capt. 
 Charles H. Robbins had put to paper some accounts of his 
 own earlier experiences, and that he has been persuaded to 
 publish them ; and to say to any friend of mine that he 
 may place confident reliance on the narrative of Capt. 
 Bobbins, as being that of one who tells of what he saw, of 
 which indeed he was much himself. 
 
 EDWAED E. HALE. 
 EOXBUKY, May 27, 1899. 
 
 M62610 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 No, dear reader, the writer of this book did not rush 
 into print because of the success of any book written upon 
 a similar subject. For years Capt. Bobbins has been 
 putting his material into shape ; and, imperfect as it may 
 be, it has been re-written a number of times. The manu 
 script was ready for publication five years ago, but was 
 held back for further revision. There has been neither 
 desire nor purpose to trade upon anybody else s popularity. 
 " The Gam " is an honest effort to afford entertainment 
 and instruction, and, judged by proper standards, it justifies 
 the claims made for it. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 MAKING A MASTER j 
 
 THE FATTED CALF .... 7 
 
 THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN 32 
 
 MARQUESAS ISLANDS .... 51 
 
 BEACH COMBERS ... 55 
 
 BRINGING MR. TOWNS END BACK AGAIN ... 60 
 
 A GLIMPSE OF SAMOA .... 76 
 
 WATERED RUM AT OTAHEITE . 81 
 
 EIGHT WHALES 37 
 
 HISTORIC MUTINEERS ... 89 
 
 RUDDER SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE . 102 
 
 WHALELAND AND ITS CUSTOMS . . . .122 
 
 THE FROZEN NORTH ..... 131 
 
 THE CAST-AWAY ... 136 
 
 THE WHALEMAN WHO WENT ON THE STAGE . .159 
 
 "WHALES HAS FEELIN S" 168 
 
 THE GAM 182 
 
 AUGUSTINE BAY . . . 195 
 
 THE ALBATROSS ... . 205 
 
 THE CAPTAIN 228 
 
 A TYPICAL WHALEMAN . . 239 
 
X ILLUSTRATIONS CONTINUED. 
 
 JUNK COMING IN AT WAIST . . . .113 
 
 HOISTING ON LOWER JAW ... .121 
 
 MINCING THE "BLUBBER" ; . 129 
 WHALESHIP "YOUNG PHOENIX" BESET IN THE ICE 137 
 SHIPS RECEIVING CAPTAINS AND CREWS OF ABAN 
 DONED VESSELS . , > .153 
 "TRYING OUT" . . . . . .145 
 
 A CAPTAIN IN His ARCTIC OUTFIT . . . 161 
 
 THE FIGHTING WHALE , * . 169 
 
 CLEANING UP AND REPAIRING . . .177 
 
 THE GAM . . *. - .185 
 
 NEW BEDFORD WHARF OF TODAY . . . 195 
 
 ST. ELMO S FIRE 205 
 
 LANDING PLACE AT ST. HELENA . . .215 
 
 "LADDER HILL" AT ST. HELENA . . . .223 
 
 THE "BRIARS" 235 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 Persistent inquiry for the volume of her father s famous 
 old whaling stories, "The Gam", now long out of print, 
 has led Miss Eobbins to believe that a new edition would 
 be welcome in New Bedford and, indeed, wherever there is 
 interest in the most picturesque industry of the Atlantic 
 coast. 
 
 It is particularly appropriate that Miss Eobbins should 
 get out the fresh edition, not only because Captain Charles 
 H. Eobbins was her father, but because she belongs in 
 such a singular sense to the old whaling days, having been 
 born on board the Bark Thomas Pope, on one of her long 
 voyages. Geographically, Miss Eobbins would be hard put 
 to it to name her birthplace. But ask her in seaman s 
 latitude and longitude and she can tell to a degree ! 
 
 The rousing old stories of whale-chasing raise many a 
 question in the minds of the reader which the former 
 volume did not attempt to answer. It has seemed worth 
 while to round out the story prepared from Captain Bob 
 bins yarns and from his old log with some history of the 
 rise and fall of the fascinating industry of whaling. To 
 this new matter has been added a set of superb pictures, 
 reproductions from photographs taken from the life 
 and death of the sperm whale, which will make this edi 
 tion a distinct contribution to the scanty literature of 
 whaling. 
 
 In the former edition all explanation of the odd title, 
 THE GAM, was deferred to a chapter way over toward 
 the back of the book. And as the words must have a 
 
Xll FOREWORD. 
 
 puzzling sound in a landsman s ear, it will be well to 
 elucidate right here. 
 
 "Gamming", is deep-sea gossiping. Two whaleships, 
 meeting on a long cruise, perhaps thousands of miles from 
 home, will heave to after the day s whale hunt is over, 
 and the captain s watch of one ship will go a-visiting in 
 the forecastle of the other. And then marvellous would 
 be the whale-stories passed round over the cards and to 
 bacco ! Captain Bobbins grist of just such characteristic 
 
 whaleman s yarns took the picturesque name, The Gam. 
 ******* 
 
 The redskins were the first whalemen of North America. 
 White explorers as far back as the days of the Cabots found 
 the Indians expert and intrepid hunters of blackfish and 
 right whale, whose feeding grounds were then close in 
 shore. For more than a century before the country was 
 successfully colonized, train-oil and whalebone were pur 
 chased from the Indians by those British sailors who kept 
 voyaging to the tempting fishing grounds of the New 
 World. 
 
 The whale played no inconspicuous part in the coming 
 of the Pilgrims, who, when they sought a place in which 
 they might exercise freedom of worship, had a canny eye 
 on the fisheries as a means of livelihood. A Mayflower 
 chronicle records that large whales "of the best kind for 
 oil and bone" came and played round the ship as she lay 
 at anchor inside Cape Cod a fact which helped mightily 
 to decide them to seek no further for a home. 
 
 Indian-fashion, the Pilgrims and first settlers set about 
 their early ventures in whaling. Drift whales, dead ones 
 floated inshore, made a considerable part of the redmen s 
 catch. But they did not hesitate to launch their light 
 canoes through the surf, swarm in dozens about a monster 
 
FOREWORD. X1U 
 
 whale, keeping agilely clear of his deadly flukes, and with 
 their crude, stone-pointed spears and arrows gradually 
 worry him to death. Then they dragged him ashore, called 
 their "chief lords" together, sang a song of triumph, and, 
 dividing the spoil, gave every member of the tribe a share. 
 
 Among the Indians no part of the captured whale save 
 the actual bones, was useless. Blubber and lean meat were 
 served up as delicacies, and the oil took* the place of the 
 white man s butter. Stomach and intestines, inflated and 
 carefully dried, did duty as excellent oil-bottles, while the 
 mighty sinews of the flukes made firm lines and ropes for 
 the catching of more whales. 
 
 Since the savages would accept in pay for their labor, 
 many to them valueless parts of a whale s carcass, the white 
 invaders were happy to employ their savage skill in whal 
 ing, providing them with the deadly European "harping- 
 iron" and lance to replace their light spears. 
 
 Up to 1650 the settlers probably went little further than 
 to keep a sharp lookout for drift-whales, squabbling vigor 
 ously when they came ashore, enacting statutes to regulate 
 the squabbles, and occasionally going off shore in pursuit of 
 a live whale which, when dispatched, they towed to the 
 beach to be cut up and tried out for oil. 
 
 In all probability Long Island deserves the honor of 
 organizing whaling on a business basis. Shore lookouts 
 were built from which the "blow" of whales might be seen 
 if they came near shore, and a regular system of watches 
 was established. It is recorded that in this way they 
 "saved" many whales. Saved! It all depends on the point 
 of view. I venture to say it looked different to the whale ! 
 
 Cape Cod was not much behind. By 1688 Secretary 
 Eandolph was writing home from Massachusetts, "New 
 Plimouth Colony have great profit by whale-killing." By 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 that time we hear of "squadrons" of small boats setting 
 out for expeditions along the coast, the whole company 
 putting into shore at night to camp on the beach. Such 
 expeditions often remained out for a week or two at a 
 stretch. Verily those were the days of small things. When 
 whaling came to full bloom, the ships sailed on voyages 
 lasting from one to three years, and sometimes longer. 
 
 Nantucket was a bit slow in getting into the game. Her 
 settlers were not by training, seafaring men. She did not 
 really turn her attention to the blubber-mines afloat all 
 about her until an indiscreet right whale fairly jumped 
 down her throat. A big fellow nosed his way into the har 
 bor and hung about for three livelong days, flaunting him 
 self before the eyes of the landlubbers. It was too much 
 for them. "They invented and caused to be made a har 
 poon" while the whale waited, and all inexperienced as 
 they were, attacked and killed the monster. 
 
 That woke them up. They set seriously about learning 
 the art of whale-chasing. Eealizing their lack of skill, 
 they sent over to Cape Cod for a tutor, one Ichabod Pad 
 dock, to teach the best way to kill whales and try out the 
 oil. That was 1690. From that time Nantucket whaling 
 advanced by leaps and bounds. 
 
 At first the islanders got all the prey they wanted 
 without going out of sight of land. Watch was set on a 
 tall mast, and the lookout spying a welcome spout, gave the 
 alarm. Prizes were towed ashore, where try-works had 
 been built, the whale was beached, cut up, and the blubber 
 tried out, the oil being cooled and casked. 
 
 Long enough after shore fishing had ceased to be profit 
 able, when the whaling fleet consisted of goodly schooners 
 and barks, the fires under the beach try-works were 
 kept blazing. Whales captured at sea were cut up, and 
 
FOREWORD. XV 
 
 the blubber in square pieces was stowed in casks to be tried 
 out at home when the voyage was done. The method was 
 wasteful, and the process of trying out putrid blubber a 
 nauseous one. Yet it was almost the middle of the eight 
 eenth century before any better way was discovered. 
 
 But I am getting ahead of my story. Two factors con 
 spired to alter the complexion of the whaling outlook very 
 early in the eighteenth century, both for Nantucket, and 
 for Long Island and Martha s Vineyard, which about this 
 time had developed quite a trade in whale-oil. As the 
 whale-hunters grew more numerous and more expert, the 
 whales were driven from their feeding grounds along the 
 coast and it became necessary to go farther and farther 
 from land to make captures. Then, in 1712, an accident 
 introduced the sperm whale to his hitherto unappreciative 
 foes on shore. Captain Christopher Hussey of Nantucket, 
 while cruising in an open boat, was caught by an offshore 
 gale and driven out to sea. The men became exhausted 
 and very likely would have died of exposure had they not 
 chanced to run in among a whole school of sperm whales. 
 One sperm whale had been seen on Nantucket, a drift speci 
 men; and the most fabulous notions were entertained as 
 to the value of the spermaceti. The sight of the huge 
 beasts roused the exhausted whalers to new life. They 
 killed a whale, and the "slick" of the oil oozing from the 
 wounded blubber so smoothed the waves that they weathered 
 the gale, and next day towed their great prize in triumph 
 to land. 
 
 After that everybody wanted sperm whale, and as the 
 sperm whale never feeds close to shore, it was necessary 
 to fit out vessels large enough to go whaling out in the 
 "deep". Even then, they made short cruises, not more 
 than six weeks, returning to shore after each capture to 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 land the blubber and sail out again to the sperm grounds. 
 
 While this was by no means the end of shore-fishing, 
 which continued profitable for many years, it was the 
 opening up of the romance of whale-hunting. Once they 
 had found their way to the deep sea the whalers ventured 
 with every voyage farther and farther from shore. Ves 
 sels of larger capacity were built to accommodate the 
 blubber from a number of whales. 
 
 According to Spears, the whalemen discovered that warm 
 river in the cold seas the Gulf Stream. It would cer 
 tainly seem that one of them Captain Folger was the 
 first to chart it at the request of Benjamin Franklin. And 
 they discovered that along the margins of the stream great 
 quantities of whale food, or brit, was to be found floating, 
 and that consequently, whales were plenty. This led them 
 to follow the Gulf Stream to Cape Hatteras, to Cuba, to 
 the Bahamas. 
 
 In 1743 the whalers began to carry their own try-pots, 
 protecting the deck from risk of fire by placing a reservoir 
 full of water beneath the furnaces. It was now possible 
 to try out the sweet blubber as it was cut in from the 
 whale, and the oil, properly boiled and cooled, could be 
 kept in perfect condition for years. This removed the last 
 obstacle to long voyages. 
 
 Moreover, British governors were displaying an incon 
 venient tendency to try to squeeze personal profit out of 
 the whaling business. The masters found it expedient to 
 Retake themselves to the open seas over which the cupidity 
 of royal governors could have no control. 
 
 Hence, the Nantucket whaler was found at the Azores, at 
 Madeira, on the coast of Africa, in Patagonia, in Brazilian 
 ports, and even as far south as the Falkland Islands. To 
 the north they penetrated to the mouth of Baffin s Bay, to 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 Greenland, to say nothing of Labrador and Newfoundland. 
 
 In 1774 the whale fishery was at the flood. Something 
 like 360 vessels were annually fitted out for whaling 
 cruises, and very nearly five thousand men were shipped 
 annually as seamen on board the fleet, the industry giving 
 occupation indirectly to an army of coopers, blacksmiths, 
 cordwainers, outfitters, stevedores, etc., beside. Between 
 1771 and 1775 the annual production of sperm oil was 
 45,000 barrels, whale-oil 8,500 barrels, and of whalebone 
 75,000 pounds. Sperm candles to the value of $118,000 
 were exported in 1770. 
 
 But trouble was ahead. In the long struggle with France 
 for possession of Canada, the colonists had done most of 
 the effective fighting on this side of the water and not a 
 few hardy New England fishermen and whalers as well as 
 farmers had given up their lives to the cause. When, 
 therefore, the fishing grounds off Newfoundland and Lab 
 rador were wrested from France, New England whalemen 
 counted upon enjoying the fruits of the colonial struggle. 
 They reckoned without Great Britain. British tax-payers 
 were clamoring to have the expense of the standing army, 
 which was necessary to hold the newly-gained territory, 
 borne entirely by the colonies; hence the policy of direct 
 taxation which brought on the Eevolution. Moreover, 
 Great Britain was covetous of both Holland and America 
 because of their thriving whale-fisheries. By means of 
 bounties, she had tried to encourage her own whaling, but 
 English ships did not bring in enough oil to supply the 
 home demand. Therefore, by way of crippling her ad 
 versaries, she clapped an import duty on oil and bone com 
 ing from the colonies. 
 
 Moreover, when New England whalers attempted to 
 cruise in the Newfoundland and Labrador grounds, they 
 
XV111 FOREWORD. 
 
 found themselves in conflict with royal governors whose 
 restrictions and hampering regulations made the fishery 
 practically impossible to any but British ships. By 1775 
 Parliament was taking the ground that the northern fish 
 eries, won almost entirely by colonial prowess, were the 
 property of England. A bill passed in that year restricted 
 the trade of New England to British ports, and prohibited 
 the colonies from carrying on any fishery on the Banks 
 or any other part of the North American coast. 
 
 In vain did even Englishmen protest that this was rigor 
 more harsh than that meted out to avowed enemies. In 
 vain was it recalled that among civilized nations at war 
 it was the custom to spare the fishing-craft; "always con 
 sidering that we wage war with nations, not with private 
 individuals." 
 
 Great Britain could not afford to consider the rules of 
 civilized warfare. She had a double motive in her dealings 
 with the whale fishery. One was to bring the colonies into 
 submission. The other to turn the rich profits of the 
 American whaling industry into British pockets. Hence 
 her treatment of Nantucket, the reading of which is cal 
 culated to make an American burn to fight the Revolution 
 all over again. 
 
 When the act forbidding all fishing along the American 
 coasts was passed, hundreds of whaling vessels, out on 
 long cruises, could not be recalled. British cruisers were 
 sent out to capture such luckless ships and their crews 
 were offered the choice of service in the British navy or 
 shipment on British whalers! Great numbers of ISTan- 
 tucket whalemen enlisted in the American navy, and 
 many others became privateers, only to fall a prey to 
 British cruisers and merchantmen, for most of them car 
 ried not more than a single cannon. 
 
FOKEWOBD. XIX 
 
 Such whaling vessels as were not captured were mostly 
 burned at the wharf. The British destroyed all shore 
 works storehouses and try-furnaces. Out of her fleet 
 of 150 vessels, Nantucket lost 134 captured and 15 
 wrecked. Meanwhile, England with her stolen Nantucket 
 whalemen, was able to carry on a very valuable whale 
 fishery on the coast of Brazil. Of a fleet of seventeen ves 
 sels reported in this fishery "all the officers and almost all 
 the men were Americans from Nantucket and Cape Cod, 
 except two or three from Rhode Island and perhaps one 
 from Long Island"! Over 1200 Nantucket men either lost 
 their lives or were taken prisoners before the Revolution 
 came to an end. 
 
 In the face of all this, one wants to take off one s hat 
 to the plucky little ship "Bedford" from Nantucket, which 
 was the first vessel to display the thirteen rebellious stripes 
 of America in a British port after peace had been declared. 
 
 Pluck could not save the Nantucket whaling. The 
 British put a duty of eighteen pounds a ton on "rebel" oil, 
 which effectually closed the English market. Moreover, 
 during the war, when fishing was impossible, the Ameri 
 cans had been forced to find substitutes for whale-oil lamps, 
 among other things, tallow candles. Hence the home mar 
 ket was slack. Moreover, poor fellows, their very success 
 in catching whales (the monsters had grown less timid 
 during the war when not pursued, and had multiplied), 
 served to glut the market and depress prices. In despair 
 a goodly number of Nantucket men emigrated to France, 
 to Nova Scotia, and even to England The island still 
 regards them as a parcel of renegades, to take the best 
 whaling blood of America to foreign ports. 
 
 Between the Revolution and the War of 1812 came a 
 period of great depression in the whaling industry. With 
 
XX FOREWORD. 
 
 the outbreak of hostilities, a number of Xew England 
 whalers took flight round Cape Horn and went to fishing 
 in Pacific waters. Xow did the emigrant whalemen show 
 themselves renegades indeed. For, knowing that their 
 old friends and comrades of Xantucket were whaling in the 
 Pacific, they sailed round the Cape to plunder at their 
 will It is a satisfaction to recall that the United States 
 frigate "Essex" not only came to the release of the Ameri 
 can whalers, but that she made prizes of all but one British 
 ship. 
 
 The War of 1812 proved to the world that the American 
 navy could make it hot for anybody who meddled with 
 American merchantmen. Then came the golden era for 
 the whalemen. Larger vessels were found to be more 
 profitable, and longer voyages became the rule. The Pa 
 cific swarmed with whalemen, who worked down the west 
 ern coast of South America, visited cannibal islands, 
 crossed to the feeding grounds off the coast of Japan, 
 cruised round Xew Zealand, Tasmania, and New Guinea. 
 They were the geographers of Oceanica. One Xantucket 
 ship, the Columbus, worked her way along the north 
 coast of Africa, into the Red Sea, across the Indian Ocean 
 and so among the islands back to his mates in the Pacific, 
 a route which thereafter became quite popular. 
 
 In 1835 the first bowhead whale was taken off the coast 
 of Alaska. Bowheads yield amazing quantities of oil, and 
 from this time on much attention was given to northern 
 waters where these ugly monsters are to be found. 
 
 In 1847 the little bark Superior, from Sag Harbor, nosed 
 her way through Bering s Strait and turned up again 19 
 months later at Sag Harbor with 80 barrels of sperm, 2400 
 of whale oil, and 20,000 pounds of whaleboDe a cargo 
 
?: F.ITT ; 7.1- 
 
 worth a cool $34,000. That opened up he way to the 
 Arctic, which became a Jaiurile *uti^ giuuad. 
 
 The year 1857 was probably high wafer mark so far 
 as tie nimiber of resseb deariiig Xew Eiigland pom. Xew 
 Bedford had long ago outstripped her early rival, Xan- 
 tucket In 185? Xew Bedford had 329 whalers, or if the 
 minor ports in the bay be added, 426. Xantncket owned 
 but 41, and most of these sailed from other ports. Hie 
 cause of !N antuckefs fl^** as a whaling port was due to a 
 bar which obstructed her harbor, and which, when large 
 whaling ships became the role, proved a serious obstacle. 
 Congress short-sightedly refused aid, and after heroic 
 efforts to float the big ships over the bar by means of a 
 "camel"" or ^**nfiiMP *^ M< ^ operated "V* Hi own steam, 
 the islanders largely gave up the fight, and by 1874 Han- 
 tucket had disappeared from the annals of whaling 
 altogether. 
 
 The Civil War has been given move than its due of 
 blame for the decline of the whaling; industry. Rebel 
 privateers did some destruction, it is true, and whaling 
 masters, not caring to fit out for cruises under snen risks, 
 sold their ships or transferred them to the mi ulnnl 
 service. Forty vessels were bought by the United States 
 Government lor the fsnmm stone fleet, sunk across the 
 month of the harbors of Charleston and Savannah to put 
 a stop to the blockade running of these southern waters. 
 
 Had not the fishery been dying from ^"fl*^ causes, 
 however, it would have motuod easily from the blows 
 of the Civil War. as it had already recovered from much 
 severer disasters in the Revolution and the War of 1819. 
 The fact is, it did revive the moment peace was declared; 
 new ships were built and everything started merrily 
 
XXli FOREWORD. 
 
 It is not easy to daunt a whaleman. The gambling ele 
 ment in the business is too strong. He risks his life, he 
 risks being eaten by cannibals, or being frozen into Arctic- 
 ice, he risks financial disaster, but all the time he "runs 
 a chance" of making a prodigious amount of money in 
 a few months. There lies the fascination. 
 
 Consider the terrible disaster to the Arctic fleet in the 
 autumn of 1871. Trusting to their experience of the 
 locking-in of the ice for the winter, and disregarding the 
 friendly warnings of the Esquimo, who urged them to run 
 for their lives, the whole fleet, some thirty-four vessels, 
 were imprisoned in the ice-sheet. Three were crushed be 
 fore the whalemen were convinced that they must be aban 
 doned with their costly cargoes, and the entire company, 
 twelve hundred seamen, with some women and children, 
 must make their way across the bitter, icy seas to the seven 
 vessels lying on the southern edge of the icefields. The 
 loss in New Bedford alone was over a million dollars. 
 Yet, the next year found twenty-seven whalers risking 
 the precarious northern seas. 
 
 No, it was neither battle, murder, nor sudden death 
 which took the heart out of the whaling. The causes of 
 its decline were economic. Whalemen had never been 
 financiers. No organization among them had controlled 
 the supply, and glutted markets were forever bringing 
 down prices. Conservation had not begun to be talked of 
 in those days. Whalemen pursued their prey relentlessly 
 farther and farther from shore and even up under the 
 ice of the North Pacific. Then, just when scarcity of 
 whales made longer and longer voyages necessary some 
 times voyages lasting four, five and six years and the 
 price of whale oil correspondingly increased, came the 
 discovery of coal oil. Once the people got over their fear 
 
FOREWORD. Xxiil 
 
 of its explosive character the kerosene lamp made short 
 work of the old whale oil affairs. 
 
 Two more agencies worked against the trade. The 
 gold fever which drew off the daring, adventurous men 
 who had been the life of whale hunting; and the rise in 
 the cost of living which made the fitting out of whalers so 
 expensive as to heavily cut in on the profit. So long as 
 the crews were made up of Americans, hardy, fearless, and 
 eager for the game, brutality on whaleships had no excuse 
 for being. Crews, even down to the cabin-boy, had the same 
 interest as the captain in making a capture, since they all 
 shared in the spoils. But since the crews have been made 
 up of Portugese from the Azores, or Kanakas, or coal- 
 black Bravas from the Cape Verd Islands, with a sprinkling 
 of Malays and Chinese, the old spirit, the old loyal pulling 
 together has disappeared. It is one thing to drive a panic- 
 stricken Pacific island mongrel into a tussle with a fight 
 ing whale ; it is quite another to control the reckless daring 
 of a pure-blooded Yankee crew. 
 
 Suffering from all these complaints, the whale fishery 
 has fallen off with some rapidity. In 1883 the whole fleet 
 numbered 125, and of these nineteen were in Pacific 
 waters. Eight years later only forty vessels remained, 
 eighteen in the Pacific. Something like that number are 
 still in service, for sperm oil and whalebone are still ne 
 cessities to modern life. The oil is used for the very 
 finest machine lubricants and in dressing leather. The 
 crude whale oil is in demand in ropewalks, and for mixture 
 with black lead for chain lubricants. Whalebone has 
 never found its equal for the dress and corsetmaker s use, 
 or for the manufacture of whips. Therefore, a few of the 
 picturesque old whale craft will continue to flatter Atlan 
 tic ports. Most of them have been sold into the merchant 
 
XXVI FOREWORD. 
 
 are in a small boat and quite another when you re aboard 
 a big vessel. Captain Jenkins regarded that whale as a 
 huge joke. He shouted to the mate that there was a whale 
 trying to get alongside. "Help him along!" roared he. 
 
 The mate was quick, but the whale was quicker. When 
 the mate stood up to let him have it, the hugh creature 
 was so near, coming so fast, he didn t have room to swing 
 his iron. He failed to make fast and the whale continued 
 to head for the ship; only, as if irritated, he redoubled 
 his already terrific speed. 
 
 Still, the captain felt only vexation at losing the prize. 
 A whale attacked can usually be counted on to sound. But 
 this one did not go down, neither did he swerve from his 
 course. 
 
 When he got within thirty feet of the ship he seemed to 
 see her and tried to dive under her keel, but he was too 
 close. His great, square head struck the bark forward 
 of the mizzen rigging, and five or six feet below the water- 
 line. The Kathleen quivered under the blow as if she had 
 crashed upon a reef. Then she rose at the stern as the 
 whale tried to come up under her, dropping back with a 
 mighty splash. 
 
 Still the captain was not alarmed. In his narrative, he 
 says, "I asked the cooper if he thought the whale had 
 hurt the ship and he said he didn t think so, for he had 
 not heard anything crack." 
 
 The whale, meanwhile, had come up to the surface and 
 "laid there and rolled, didn t seem to know what to do." 
 Perhaps his head ached or he was seeing stars. The mate 
 seeing him thus subdued was for getting an iron into him. 
 But Captain Jenkins ordered him alongside. With night 
 coming on and the three other boats out of sight, he didn t 
 think it best to "fool" with that whale any more. So the 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 mate reluctantly hoisted his boat and joined the captain 
 at the masthead, where his young eyes easily "raised" the 
 boats, all fast to whales. 
 
 Just then a shout from below warned Captain Jenkins 
 that the whale "hadn t done a thing" to the bark. The 
 forecastle was filling with water. "Quite a hole in her", 
 he says there was. He instantly set signals for all boats 
 to come on board. But a whaleman fast to a whale 
 doesn t lightly let go. The boats paid no attention. 
 
 The Kathleen s case was beyond help. There was noth 
 ing to do but stow water and bread into the boat, collect 
 Mrs. Jenkins and the parrot she declined to abandon, and 
 take to the sea. Five minutes after the boat was lowered, 
 the Kathleen rolled over to windward. They had no more 
 than time to get clear. 
 
 Twenty-one souls, with supplies, sunk the small boat 
 so deep in the water that the waves came over the centre 
 board and all hands were kept busy bailing. It was a 
 beautiful moonlight night and the sea was considerately 
 smooth. Yet, as I said, they were just about a thousand 
 miles from anywhere in an open boat, with a modest supply 
 of bread and water. The situation was not cheering. 
 
 First of all they set their sails and steered in the direc 
 tion where they supposed the other boats to lie. It seemed 
 a thoughtful attention to tell them they needn t waste 
 any time on those whales or on looking for the poor old 
 barky, and to give them some bread and water. 
 
 By good luck they raised the boats about nine that 
 night. In his moderate whaleman s way, Captain Jenkins 
 says, "They were very much surprised to hear that the 
 Kathleen was gone!" The four boats immediately put 
 about and steered for the island of Barbados, 1060 miles 
 away. Three of them were picked up by a steamer after 
 
xxviii FOREWORD. 
 
 a lapse of twelve hours, but the fourth, getting separated 
 from the rest, made the run to the Barbados in nine days, 
 the mate and nine seamen subsisting that time on 5 gal 
 lons of water and a little ship s bread. 
 
 The Kathleen was a total loss. As for the whale, Cap 
 tain Jenkins can only hope that the barky s keel killed 
 as many of him as he did of her. 
 
MAKING A MASTER.; 
 
 ONE keen winter morning in 1837, there stood 
 before Captain Lewis Tobey, of the ship Swift, a 
 boy asking permission to go with him on his next 
 voyage. The captain looking sharply at his 
 visitor, saw a lad of hardly fifteen, slight, erect, 
 with dark hair and deep blue eyes, and something 
 about his square chin and firm mouth which he 
 seemed to think argued well for the future. 
 
 " Take your hands out of your pockets, and tell 
 me your name," demanded the master. 
 
 " My name is Charles H. Bobbins," replied the 
 boy, his eyes on the hands which were now 
 clasped in front of him. That boy was myself. 
 
 " Who is your father ? " was the next question. 
 
 " My father was Lemuel Bobbins, sir," I replied 
 softly. " He died six years ago." 
 
 The captain remembered that he had seen the 
 boy before. Many evenings when he sat telling 
 sea tales to the friends who were his entertainers 
 on shore, this lad, visiting his chum, the young 
 son of the family, had been among his listeners. 
 
 The result of that morning interview was a 
 decision that I should go as cabin-boy on the ship 
 Swift, which was very soon to sail. 
 
Z MAKING A MASTER. 
 
 As I walked away, after my conversation with 
 the captain, ?ny unexpressed feeling was that for 
 me real life was about to begin ; the life of 
 achievement, of accomplishment, of profit. I had 
 made what I considered a good bargain with the 
 ship-master. I was to receive fifty dollars before 
 sailing, and fifty dollars on my return home. 
 What boy does not regard a hundred dollars as a 
 fortune ? 
 
 There was pressing need that real life should 
 begin, that good bargains should be made. Nine 
 living children had my mother, the widow 
 Bobbins, of whom I was the seventh. My birth 
 place had been Mattapoisett, where I had lived 
 six of my fifteen years. The little New Bedford 
 house on hilly Foster Street, which had been my 
 home for nine years, was uncomfortably full, and 
 insufficiently furnished with life s necessities, and 
 there were only two men children among my 
 mother s brood. To the Mercury office, where I 
 had been employed as office boy and paper- 
 carrier, there often came a marine reporter, 
 telling, with the glib tongue and ready imagina 
 tion common to his kind, of the adventures and 
 the gains of those who secure a livelihood by the 
 sea. These relatings, to which were added those 
 of Captain Tobey, aided by my own imagination, 
 
MAKING A MASTER. 6 
 
 convinced me that no better employment could 
 befall a man than was to be had on ship-board. 
 To the conviction that it was my duty to 
 materially aid in supporting our family, was added 
 youth s longing for change, and the appeal which 
 the wide, free ocean life made to my poetic 
 temperment. To my mother s opposition to the 
 contemplated voyage, I said, " If I don t go now, 
 I shall at some future time," and her consent was 
 finally given. 
 
 One February day I went out of the old home 
 gate a very sad feeling boy. The very squeak of 
 the hinges seemed to be saying good-bye. I was 
 going to join the ship. I was already homesick, 
 but even with that terrible feeling tugging at my 
 heart I did not wish things otherwise. The 
 remembrance of the kind tones and genial manner 
 of the captain I had so many times met on shore 
 was a great comfort to me in my loneliness, as 
 with misty eyes I looked farewell to every well- 
 known object as I hurried down the familiar 
 streets which led to the wharf. But alas for my 
 hopes of sympathy ! As having reached the ship, 
 I stood ready for my duties at the foot of the 
 stairs leading below, the captain came on board, 
 carrying in his hand a bandanna handkerchief 
 which, with its ends tied together, served as a 
 receptacle for half a dozen fine apples. 
 
4 MAKING A MASTER. 
 
 "Here/ he shouted to me, "take these and 
 carry them to my cabin, and if you put one of 
 your teeth in them I will break every bone in 
 your body." 
 
 Thus early and abruptly I was made aware of 
 the difference between an old school captain 
 ashore and afloat, and reminded of the remark of 
 a previous cabin-boy of the Swift, who had said 
 to me, "You would enjoy hell better than a 
 voyage with Tobey as master." 
 
 For ten days the Swift lay in port, hemmed in 
 by ice, and I, so near home and so unutterably 
 homesick, was not allowed to leave the ship. 
 The confined sailors, the liquor which they had 
 brought on board as a part of their outfit becom 
 ing exhausted, determined to cut away a boat 
 and land at all hazards, but on its becoming 
 known that the mate had given orders to shoot 
 any sailor who attempted to do this, the men 
 gave up the idea. At last, fearing that longer 
 delay would mean mutiny, the captain had a 
 passage cut through the ice, and the ship cleared 
 the harbor. 
 
 Then began that drill which transforms raw 
 sailors into experienced seamen. The first thing 
 which a newly shipped hand is required to do is 
 to learn the rigging. Every mast and spar and 
 
MAKING A MASTER. 5 
 
 sail and rope must be so familiar to him that in 
 the darkest night, without a ray of light, he can 
 handle them quickly, accurately and effectively, 
 knowing everything as well by touch as by sight. 
 To many a newly made sailor it is one of life s 
 most terrible moments when he is first ordered to 
 the masthead, that cruelly- tapering, suggestively- 
 towering spire, a glance at whose skyward reaches 
 causes the brain to reel and the heart to fail. 
 But the mounting is inevitable. If one refuses it, 
 punishment is also inevitable, and the task still to 
 be accomplished. To a kind hearted master this 
 forcing of young sailors into the rigging is an 
 almost heartbreaking experience ; to the calloused 
 captain a most exasperating one. But the Swift s 
 cabin-boy wanted to go into the rigging, longed 
 to learn everything, great and small, about a 
 vessel, and that right quickly. As the days went 
 on, although my duties as cabin-boy were never 
 neglected, I worked much of each day among the 
 men, constantly gaining a thorough knowledge of 
 every form of seamen s craft. In the boats which 
 were sent out to drill for the capturing of whales, 
 I became an expert. While the captain was 
 trying to teach the second and third mate naviga 
 tion, I was sitting in a state-room opposite the 
 cabin occupied by the three, noting all the many 
 
6 MAKING A MASTER. 
 
 times repeated instructions, and at the end of the 
 lesson I went below and worked out the correct 
 solution to the problem, which I handed to the 
 surprised and delighted master, who thereafter 
 taught me navigation with great thoroughness, 
 and depended upon me to keep the ship s time. 
 
 It was continually being made evident that this 
 captain of ready blows and fierce language had 
 yet a place in his heart which could be touched 
 by real merit and conscientious devotion to duty, 
 and I often found that presents followed kickings, 
 and the imparting of valuable knowledge or the 
 granting of privileges a torrent of abuse. 
 
 So rapid was my advancement that during this 
 first voyage, as I became boat-steerer, I was 
 mentally, morally, and physically becoming the 
 well-rounded man. Many a cruise as mate and 
 master did I make after this initial one, but 
 that fifty-four months of untold hardships, of 
 uncounted humiliations, gave me the readiness, 
 the knowledge, the experience, and the resolves 
 from the fusion of which there was evolved the 
 captain of my dreams. 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 There s many a slip twixt the two mugs ! " 
 
 O Hoolihan s Proverbs. 
 
 " NOT by any means," said the Girl. " On the 
 other hand, you are very vividly remembered ! " 
 
 "And by what?" 
 
 " By lots of things glorious things, too but 
 I hardly think you re proud of them now ! " 
 
 " Oh ! I don t know." 
 
 " I do, though," said a voice from across the 
 supper table. " He s as proud of them as ever he 
 was. Five years haven t changed him a particle. 
 He s just the same incorrigible young rascal he 
 was before he went away to sea ! " 
 
 " Is that true ? " said the Girl. 
 
 " I m afraid it is," he laughed, " I m truly 
 afraid it is ! Just ask the old man. He ll tell 
 you. But " the jolly prodigal turned to the 
 Girl at his side. He blushed as her eyes met his. 
 It was so long since he had talked to girls. He 
 felt like a tough, old right whale addressing a 
 little pink water-lily. 
 
 "But," he made bold to ask, "what are the 
 glorious things you think I m not proud of?" 
 
8 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 " Mr. Bobbins, if you please, I prefer not to 
 tell." She tossed her pretty head, and the two 
 long, dark ringlets, nestling against her soft 
 cheeks, seemed to laugh and taunt him. They 
 were as bewitchingly mischievous as her brown 
 eyes, or the dimples that came and went with her 
 smiles, or even that defiant little toss of her head. 
 The tiny gold beads, too, and the big cameo brooch 
 were leagued together against him. So were her 
 smooth, white shoulders. For in those good old 
 days of Forty-one, the Girl, whose picture (in 
 daguerrotype, of course) is still considered the 
 supreme triumph of New Bedford photography, 
 was in the first bloom of her youth and beauty. 
 
 " Oh, but you re not going to get off so easy ! " 
 said still another voice. " If Dorothy won t tell, 
 we will. You re remembered for putting a flat 
 stone on the top of Daddy Jones s chimney. Yes, 
 and for smoking old Daddy out of his cobbler-shop 
 as if he d been a poor hunted wood-chuck." 
 
 "And for writing a Bible verse on Daddy Jones s 
 door," cried a lad with a rose in his coat, trying 
 to loom into view from the lee side of a much- 
 hewn turkey. " Don t you remember ? It was 
 when Daddy had got so lazy he never opened his 
 shop till ten in the morning, and the Prodigal and I 
 wrote on his door, "He is not dead, but sleepeth!" 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 9 
 
 " Yes, yes," cried the blonde girl in lavendar, 
 " for that, too, and for kicking the football against 
 Squire Tomlinson s window so he came out as mad 
 as a March hare, and seized the ball and put it in 
 the stove. 0, we remember you well ! The deeds 
 that New Bedford boys do live after them. Besides, 
 we ve not forgotten how you got another foot-ball 
 next day and filled it with gunpowder, and then 
 kicked that against the window till the Squire came 
 and caught it and put it in the stove just like 
 the first one, and then there wasn t any stove." 
 
 The Prodigal turned again to Dorothy. " You 
 wouldn t have told those stories, would you ? " 
 He thought this tentative sally a triumph of pure 
 heroism. He was never so timid in his life. He 
 had chased whales and darted harpoons into their 
 slippery black backs out of the dancing prow of a 
 whale-boat ; he had gone among tattooed natives 
 who might have cooked and eaten him had they 
 chosen ; he had clambered down over the ship s 
 bows in a storm to repair a broken bob-stay, and 
 had stuck it out bravely till the bob-stay was 
 mended, though he was plunged twenty times 
 under water before the process was complete ; but 
 those exploits were as nothing beside this highly 
 problematic encounter with ringlets, and dimples, 
 and soft eyes, and tender white shoulders ! 
 
10 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 " No, sir," said Dorothy (that was before young 
 people were taught never to say sir to anybody) 
 " I assure you I wouldn t have told those stories ; 
 tortures couldn t have drawn them from me ! " 
 
 The Prodigal felt thirty feet tall. Dorothy s 
 smile made his heart leap. It was like Words 
 worth s rainbow in its effect. 
 
 " But," said Dorothy, growing stern all of a 
 sudden, " I expect to be rewarded for my good 
 ness. I ve got you in my power now, and you 
 must do my bidding to the death ! " (She looked 
 straight through him with her round eyes.) " And 
 I greatly fear you ll fail of your quest ; and if you 
 do fail, then you re no true knight ! " (Dimpling 
 again, her pretty cheeks coming up ever so little 
 to make her eyes dance and sparkle.) "Wretched 
 swain," (very serious again, pausing, with tight- 
 closed lips), " I command you to confess all your 
 manifold sins and wickednesses yes, every one 
 of them. Every jolly wrong thing you did while 
 you served as cabin boy on the dear old Swift, 
 and if the sins you confess aren t as picturesque as 
 those you committed in New Bedford before you 
 turned whaleman, then" (a majestic toss of 
 the head that set the ringlets caressing her 
 pink cheeks again) "I ll refuse to grant you 
 forgiveness ! " 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 11 
 
 " Yes, old fellow, you ll do as Dorothy says, if 
 you re wise. She has her way sooner or later 
 every time and there s no escape. We all have to 
 submit, and you re no exception, even if you are 
 a whaleman ! " 
 
 Submit ? Of course he would submit. He 
 would have pushed a holy stone up and down 
 the deck from morn till dewy eve (and never 
 growled) if the Girl had bidden him. He would 
 have tarred the rigging from the fore-royal stay 
 to the topping-lift (and left no " holidays") if the 
 Girl had so ordered. He would have slushed the 
 mast in the blaze of the torrid equatorial sun (and 
 without inwardly cursing the lot of poor Jack) if 
 Dorothy s dimpling smiles would have approved 
 his toil. And, as the greater includes the less, he 
 was ready to tell at her behest how he had consti 
 tuted himself a persona non grata aboard the 
 whale-ship Swift. 
 
 He was twenty. At fifteen he had signed sail 
 ing papers that bound him away as a cabin-boy 
 on a three years voyage sperm-whaling, but the 
 three years had stretched out to four, and the 
 four to nearly five. At last he was home again, 
 after roving so long among the islands of the 
 South Pacific. He had just arrived. In fact, 
 twenty-four hours had not yet gone by since he 
 
12 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 had rushed in upon his mother and been formally 
 introduced to his own sisters, who had grown to 
 unrecognizable dimensions since his departure; 
 and this grand New England banquet was being 
 given in his honor by neighbors just over the way. 
 The sixteen young people around the table were 
 his old schoolmates. They called him the Prodi 
 gal ; but well they knew that the boy had come 
 home unstained from his wanderings. With equal 
 pertinence, and not less, they called the turkey a 
 fatted calf." 
 
 He had perhaps an unusually pleasant way of 
 telling a story, this young sea-rover a way that 
 has remained with him until this day. He hoists 
 his Blue Peter, heaves up his mud-hook, shakes 
 out his canvas and puts to sea. Nobody tries to 
 help him. He sails over his course as straight as 
 a well-found ship, and he comes into port with a 
 new coat of paint, and pendant flying. 
 
 " Well," said the Prodigal, " if I must, I must. 
 And I ll begin by telling you how the old man put 
 his watch in soak." 
 
 "Stop!" cried the Girl. "I object. This is 
 not to be a story about an old gentleman. What s 
 more, it s not to be told in sailor language. It s 
 to be about yourself " (such a sweet tone as she 
 said " yourself ") " and it s to be told in faultless 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 13 
 
 New Bedford English (eyes again, utterly distract 
 ing) or I ll ! " 
 
 " But," the Prodigal answered, " you ve not yet 
 heard the story. Listen. The old man is the 
 captain (they always call him so on shipboard) ; 
 6 putting one s watch in soak is not a sea-term at 
 all ; and the story is really about me, and it s told 
 in the only language I know, for I ve lived in the 
 cabin like a fine gentleman. You must remember 
 that the boy s not allowed to go before the mast. 
 
 " So, here goes." He was now under way. He 
 would forge ahead, all fluking, without further 
 interruption. 
 
 " After we d been about six months out from 
 home, we anchored at Porter s, one of the Galla- 
 pagos Islands, and there we found an old apple- 
 bowed, square-sterned, painted-ported bark, the 
 Surprise, of Wilmington, Cap n Crocker. Next 
 morning the two old men Crocker and my own 
 cap n gave liberty on shore for all hands, ex 
 cept cooks, stewards, and boys, to hunt terrapin, 
 if you call that liberty. After they had landed, 
 the old man and Crocker called us boys and took 
 us ashore to help them try and catch a seal. 
 Mighty glad we were to go. 
 
 " We landed on a little island, only three miles 
 round and covered with woods. It was high and 
 very rugged. 
 
14 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 " The cap ns gave us youngsters leave to ramble 
 about for an hour, so we thought we d cross the 
 island, get down to the shore on the other side, 
 and follow the beach back to the boat. We had 
 high hopes of finding a seal, for neither of us had 
 ever seen one alive. 
 
 " It was easy enough getting to the top of the 
 island, but from there on it was all a tangle of 
 gullies and ravines, and when we finally came to 
 the other side we found ourselves looking down 
 from the edge of a three-hundred-foot cliff. It 
 made us dizzy, as you may imagine, to peer over 
 it, but we lay out flat on our stomachs and rested 
 our heads on our hands and our elbows on the 
 rocks, and studied that bluff. It was straight 
 up and down, like the Swift s checkered sides. 
 There was no beach at the bottom. There 
 was a dead flat calm, no waves at all save the 
 everlasting heave and swell that never ceased and 
 never will cease ; and yet the breakers were 
 white at the foot of the cliff and we could hear 
 their roar. It was what we sailors call an iron- 
 bound coast. 
 
 " Our hearts went down into the soles of our 
 boots. Climb down that precipice ? Crawl along 
 at the water s edge ? Not by a jugful ! 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 15 
 
 " Suddenly it occured to us we must have been 
 gone a pretty long hour. So we started back 
 disappointed and scared and ashamed the 
 way we had come, as well as we could judge, 
 and we were not far wrong. But everything was 
 against us. Thorns and brambles caught us, one 
 or both. Steep crags got in our way on purpose. 
 Gullies sank under our feet. So fully four hours 
 had gone by when we came in view of the landing 
 place again. The cap ns were hallooing with all 
 their might, but we were too scared to answer 
 and so kept still. That didn t pay, though. When 
 the old man clapped his eyes on me, he hollered 
 out at the top of his lungs, Come here, you 
 rascal. I ll learn you to run away ! I ll learn 
 you to keep me waiting ! Come here till I make 
 a little spread-eaglet of you ! I ll learn you this 
 lesson so it ll stick in your back as well as your 
 head ! Come ! Are you dead ? Show a leg there ! 
 
 " With that the old man grabbed hold of the 
 boat s warp and was going to give me a thrashing 
 with the bitter end of it. But the other cap n 
 begged me off. 
 
 " Well, said the old man, I ll put druggs on 
 the rascal so he won t run out so blamed swift. 
 Here s what I ll do. Cap n Crocker can have his 
 way about the little spread-eaglet, but I ll have 
 
16 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 mine about that twenty-pound stone over yonder 
 there. Come, sonny wax, bring me that flat stone 
 that big, round one, with the barnacles all 
 over it ! 
 
 " I went and brought the stone. It was shaped 
 like Daddy Jones s lapstone and it weighed not an 
 ounce under twenty pounds. The old tyrant took 
 that stone and slung it to my back with a strong 
 cord slipped round in a lark s head knot. 
 
 " c Now/ he roared, I guess you ll not get out 
 of hailing distance again this cruise ! 
 
 " Then we pushed the boat off through the 
 rollers and made for the large island. I tugged 
 at my oar with the big stone banging against my 
 shoulder-blades and jabbing the barnacles into my 
 back. I would rather have taken the rope-ending. 
 
 " I thought we d never get ashore, but at last 
 we did. We rushed the boat out of the water on 
 a fine sand beach, a mile or more long and as 
 straight as a street. 
 
 " The cap ns started ahead, keeping a bright 
 lookout for seals, but we boys lagged behind, 
 and as soon as we dared we got a new stone, the 
 same shape but only about half as heavy, and 
 no barnacles on it, and we put it in place of the 
 twenty-pounder on my back. I tell you, it was a 
 relief ! 
 

 
 "BLAST THE BOY ! I VE GOT A PRETTY DRENCHING. 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 17 
 
 " The cap ns had got a long way in the lead 
 a quarter of a mile at the very least when sud 
 denly I heard a rifle-shot and saw a moving puff 
 of blue smoke. 
 
 " The old man had shot a seal, and the wounded 
 beast was dancing around the beach like a man in 
 a sack-race, and every jump he made brought him 
 a little nearer the water. 
 
 " The old man wanted me now as he d never 
 wanted me before, for I had the powder and balls 
 in my pocket to reload his rifle. He hollered like 
 mad. 
 
 46 Hurry up, you scoundrel ! Do you hear ? 
 Quick ! Drop your ballast, I tell you ; quick, or 
 I ll thrash you ! Quick I say ! Quick ! QUICK ! L 
 QUICK ! ! ! 
 
 " I ran as fast as I could, but the sand was soft 
 and the stone was hard and I made sorry work 
 of it. 
 
 " The old man chased the seal into the water 
 with a club, but as soon as the animal got afloat 
 in the surf he was the better off for the change. 
 He dashed away for life and liberty the old 
 man after him, dealing murderous blows with the 
 cudgel. As I came up, puffing and blowing like a 
 winded walrus, the old man was in up to his ears 
 in salt water and the seal was bleeding from a 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 dozen gashes at once. Another swing of the club 
 put him out of his misery. 
 
 "The old man came splashing and sputtering 
 out of the surf, dragging his lifeless prey after 
 him. 
 
 " Blast the boy/ he yelled, I ve got a pretty 
 drenching/ 
 
 " Cap n Crocker roared with laughter. Better 
 have left the boy free to run, sir ! 
 
 " The old man shook himself like a wet dog. 
 
 " ( Cap n/ cried Crocker, rolling from side to 
 side with amusement, can you tell me the time 
 o day ? 
 
 " The old man felt for his watch, only to dis 
 cover that he had ruined it in the surf ! 
 
 " Crocker stamped about the beach, bellowing 
 like a facetious big bull. 0-ho-ho ! he howled, 
 I ve seen many a beautiful timepiece go in soak 
 in my day, but never before on account of a 
 rascally cabin boy with a stone on his back ! 
 
 " So that s how the old man put his watch in 
 soak, your majesty. Please, may I stop now ? " 
 
 He looked into Dorothy s eyes as he spoke. 
 They looked into his. There was nothing re 
 markable in that, but nevertheless he felt as if he 
 had taken something that didn t belong to him. 
 However, he had no desire to put it back. 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 19 
 
 " I forgive thee " said the girl. " Isn t that what 
 you hope from me?" A burst of generous laughter 
 shook the table. 
 
 " What did we tell you ? " said he of the red 
 rose. " Just the same rogue as before he turned 
 blubber-hunter. Daddy Jones was right. You 
 remember he said, < Glad he s gone pesky glad, 
 but I pity that there cap n o his n ! 
 
 Turkey, doughnuts, mince-pie, and sweet cider 
 had found their way to destruction. The merry 
 party left the table and trooped into the large, 
 old-fashioned parlor, where the fun began afresh. 
 There was dancing, in the quaint manner now 
 gone by ; there were games, of the hilarious 
 sort no longer in vogue; there were songs 
 forgotten, most of them, long ere this. The 
 Prodigal thought it a sumptuous occasion. For 
 five years he had not sat in a cushioned chair 
 or stepped upon a carpeted floor. To his sailorly 
 eyes that staid and demure parlor, with its tall 
 looking-glasses, its marbled wall-paper, and its 
 solemn, mahogany furniture, was princely mag 
 nificence. To all intents it far outshone the 
 wealth of Ormus and of Ind. 
 
 But the Girl was there not always at his side, 
 but always responsive. Even if she sat, for the 
 moment, at the farther end of the room, under 
 
20 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 the silver candalabra, she made him feel that her 
 interest was in him. Was it her eyes ? Perhaps 
 for they were always brightest as they met his. 
 Or was it her pretty posture ? Very likely for 
 it was always one of eager attention when he 
 spoke. He thought for a moment that he was 
 being mischievously pursued. Then he thought 
 it rather nice to be pursued. Finally he thought 
 the Girl was not at all to blame for pursuing so 
 interesting a person as the returned Prodigal from 
 the South Pacific. Besides, had not he done all 
 he knew how, in his sailorly way, to interest the 
 Girl? 
 
 "You didn t do as you promised," she said, 
 when they chanced to come side by side again. 
 " You promised to confess all your sins, and you 
 stopped with one though it was a very good 
 one. And now, sir, if you don t confess another 
 this very minute if not sooner, I ll ostracize 
 you ! " 
 
 " How s that done?" 
 
 " You ll find out to your grief," said the red 
 rose, "if you don t tell another story as good as 
 the last, and that immediately. 
 
 " Yes, yes," they all cried, " confess your sins 
 or we ll ostracize you, too, and it ll be some 
 thing awful awful ! " 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 21 
 
 They drew their chairs close around the Prodi 
 gal. There was no way of escape. He was 
 secretly glad there was none. 
 
 Doubtless it was not wholly by accident that 
 Dorothy sat directly in front of him. Her seat 
 was a sort of low hassock. She curled herself 
 round it prettily, one knee raised, one little slipper 
 peeping out from the edge of her yellow satin 
 gown, her hands clasped over her knee, and her 
 sweet face lifted up toward his. A girl is her 
 loveliest when she looks up. Probably that is 
 why Dorothy had chosen the hassock. 
 
 " Well, if I must, I must. This time I ll tell 
 you about the Ten Commandments. 
 
 " One Sunday, not so very long after the old 
 man had put his watch in soak, I happened to be 
 feeling a bit out of sorts. I knew that if I told 
 the old man I was sick he d dose me with castor 
 oil every hour for a week. So I cast about for a 
 nice, quiet place to lie down and go to sleep. I 
 found just what I wanted and, willingly running 
 the risk of punishment, I curled myself up in the 
 second mate s bunk and sailed for the land of Nod. 
 
 " Now it was my duty to take the hog-yoke on 
 deck at eleven o clock." (Dorothy s eyes said, 
 " What, sir, do you mean by a hog-yoke?") 
 " That s the quadrant, you know, for the old man 
 
22 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 to shoot the sun " (a frown of perplexity on 
 Dorothy s white forehead) "I mean, for the old 
 man to take the sun s altitude and see what 
 latitude we were in. That s the only safe way to 
 steer a ship, you know. 
 
 "But that day the quadrant didn t come on 
 deck in time. In fact, it didn t come at all. 
 
 " The old man was frantic. He set all hands 
 searching for me. They hunted in the cabin, 
 they hunted in the fo c sle that s where the 
 sailors live, you know ; you call it ( forecastle/ 
 and that s wrong and they hunted in the steer 
 age ; but nobody could find me. 
 
 "Then the old man got anxious. He hailed 
 the men at the mast-heads wanted to know if 
 they d seen anything floating on the water astern 
 of the ship, which meant, of course, had the cabin 
 boy gone overboard ? At last the old man got so 
 worried he wasn t content with ordering other 
 folks to hunt, but even turned to and hunted 
 for me himself. 
 
 "Now all this while I was dreaming of an 
 enchanted island, loaded with treasures, and I was 
 just going to be married to the queen of the 
 island, when there came a tremendous yank at my 
 collar, and the old man landed me on the floor 
 with a shock that all but shivered my timbers and 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 23 
 
 studded the ceiling with all the blazing stars in 
 creation. 
 
 " The old man kicked me up the cabin stairway 
 and gave me half an hour to think. Meanwhile, 
 he was thinking, I knew that. He was inventing 
 some wonderful new kind of punishment, and he 
 was going to try it on me as soon as he d got it 
 all invented. 
 
 " At last he came on deck. Boy/ he shouted, 
 can you say the Ten Commandments ? 
 
 " No, sir/ I answered. I used to when I was 
 in Sunday school, but I can t now, sir/ 
 
 " Then you just tumble down the cabin stairs 
 and bring the Bible on deck/ 
 
 " I did as the old man said, and then he gave 
 me the funniest order you ever heard on a ship. 
 i Go out on the end o that spanker-boom, take 
 that Bible along with you, and don t you dare to 
 come back till you can say the Ten Command 
 ments from beginning to end without a single 
 mistake, or I ll make a little spread eaglet of you ! 
 That s what I ll do ! > 
 
 " What ? Don t know what the spanker-boom 
 is ? Why, it s the big round spar that keeps the 
 spanker down, and the spanker, you know, is the 
 monstrous hind sail of the ship. What a place to 
 learn the Ten Commandments by heart! That 
 
24 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 spanker-boom is the unsteadiest piece of stick 
 aboard any vessel, and the further out you go the 
 livelier it swings. 
 
 " Well, I tucked the book under my left arm, 
 and crawled along that swinging boom, way out 
 over the hurricane house and far beyond the 
 ship s stern. When I got to the end of it ? I 
 leaned my breast against the topping-lift, with one 
 arm curled round it, and laced my legs together 
 under the boom. 
 
 " Then I began a hunt for the Ten Command 
 ments. I hadn t the faintest notion where to look 
 for them. First I thought I d try Revelation. 
 Next it seemed more likely they d turn up some 
 where in Ruth.. Again, I had an impulse that 
 led me toward Jonah. Jonah is a very popular 
 book among sailors. It s almost as good as the 
 story of Paul s shipwreck, where they put haw 
 sers round and round the ship, just as if they 
 were strapping a trunk. 
 
 " But at last I concluded to begin at the first 
 chapter of Genesis, and eat along to windward till 
 I raised the Ten Commandments. Happy thought ! 
 I found them in fifteen minutes. Then I set 
 about learning them. 
 
 " The boom swung in the wind, the topping- 
 lift quivered from the strain on it, the white wake 
 
WHAT A PLACE TO LEARN THE TEN COMMANDMENTS BY HEART. 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 25 
 
 ran bubbling under me, and the wind blew the 
 pages of the Bible so I thought it would tear them 
 out and whisk them away. Now and then I would 
 look up. Every man on deck was staring aft and 
 wondered what in the name of hemp and oakum 
 the old man had sent the boy out there for ! 
 
 " As soon as I got the Commandments so I 
 could say them, I crawled back on deck and said 
 my piece to the old man every word right. 
 The old man told me < not to forget em, for if I 
 did he d learn em into my back with a rope s end 
 so they d never come out. 
 
 " Several Sundays later, instead of giving the 
 crew a day of comparative rest, the old man 
 found them some extra work to do. He con 
 formed to the spirit of the old rhyme, 
 
 " Six days shalt thou work and do all thou art able, 
 
 And on the seventh, holy-stone the deck and clean-scrape 
 the cable. 
 
 But the particular application he gave it was, 
 having an old torn sail got on deck and mended. 
 The crew were growling as they went about their 
 task. They were as sullen as a crowd of school 
 boys kept in at recess. 
 
 "I thought I d see if I could change that a 
 little. So when the old man came on deck, I 
 
26 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 strolled past him, muttering just loud enough for 
 him to hear : Remember-the-Sabbath-day-to 
 keep-it-holy-six-days-shalt-thou-labor- and - do 
 all-thy- work-but - the - seventh-day-is-the-Sab- 
 bath-of-the-Lord-thy-God-in-it-thou-shalt - not 
 do-any-work-thou-nor-thy-mate - nor - thy-sec- 
 ond - mate - nor - thy - third- mate-nor-thy-crew 
 nor thy-cook nor thy carpenter nor thy-cooper 
 nor-thy-cabin-boy . 
 
 " The old man pretended he didn t hear me, but 
 after awhile he went below and I heard his bell ring. 
 
 " So down I tumbled, and as soon as the old 
 man got his face straight he said, < Boy, what day 
 is this ? 
 
 " 4 Sunday, sir/ 
 
 " That so ? Then you go straight to the chief 
 mate and tell him I say knock off work on that 
 sail and quit breaking the Sabbath day ! 
 
 " After that we used to get a little rest of a 
 Sunday ; and that s the sum and substance of the 
 Ten Commandment story. Please may I stop ? " 
 
 " Drop anchor ! " laughed the girl. Then the 
 Prodigal suggested a fresh game, and the scene 
 shifted anew. Instead of a group around the 
 Prodigal, you had a group around Dorothy. 
 
 Now I had all along been thinking what ! I? 
 Ah, I ve let Pussy pop out of my bag of discretion! 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 27 
 
 Yes, I. A truce to disguises ! The Prodigal 
 was myself, or the self that was then Charlie 
 Robbins, as they all called me Capn n Bobbins, 
 as they call me today. 
 
 To resume (and with an easier conscience) T, 
 Charlie Robbins, cabin-boy, was thinking that 
 Dorothy was the sweetest girl in the world, that 
 I had made a profound impression upon her, and 
 that my life would be an arid waste if I let her 
 escape me. She was so distractingly pretty, and 
 so dangerously clever. I remembered that when 
 I bade her good-bye five years ago she was a year 
 younger than I. Gratifying reflection she must 
 be so, still ! 
 
 I was building air-castles. 
 
 I knew I must move rapidly. Girls are so dif 
 ferent from whales at least to whalemen. For 
 you get fast to a whale and if he runs, you run ; 
 or if he goes down, you wait till he conies up 
 again. Barring accidents, it s only a matter of 
 time till you kill him or he kills you. But with 
 girls its more complicated. Sometimes you re not 
 fast to them when you think you are. Sometimes 
 they go down and never come up again. And 
 when you re a whaleman you ve little time for 
 courting. The stay in a home port is shockingly 
 short. That ship in the harbor won t lay her 
 
28 
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 main yard aback and wait till the chase is ended. 
 You must be quick. 
 
 I made up my mind that I would improve the 
 first and all subsequent opportunities of charming, 
 captivating and otherwise hypnotizing this unex 
 ampled young lady. Whatever form later chances 
 might assume, the near and most available one 
 was my fund of sea-yarns. I was a sort of blubber- 
 hunting Othello. She was my incomparable 
 Desdemona. 
 
 So I lowered away, every chance I got. 
 
 Her taste, I thought, was peculiar. She cared 
 little or nothing for whales that tossed one s boat 
 in the air with their flukes, or for the cannibal 
 islanders that cook one and eat one, or for hurri 
 canes and tidal waves and waterspouts and the 
 terrors of "the vasty deep." She demanded 
 yarns about me (how gratifying ! ) and about my 
 "sins." Every time she would look as stern 
 as a whaler s skipper and say, " Avast there ! " 
 and then laugh so prettily that I inwardly 
 cursed myself for ever having adopted the whale 
 man s lot and then say, " Go on, Mr. Bobbins ! 
 I must have the next story now and as good 
 as the last, or I ll ostracize you ! " 
 
 They were a curious skein of yarns. How I 
 was sent to get the grindstone from the locker 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 21) 
 
 under the cabin-stairs, drew out a bag of letters, 
 and in so doing knocked the grindstone against a 
 demijohn of turpentine, which toppled over help 
 lessly, a reeking, jingling wreck, with the conse 
 quence that thereafter the old man made me keep 
 a Domesday Book, to record everything I managed 
 to lose or break on board the ship ; how I came to 
 be held to blame whenever a tool was mislaid, 
 with the penalty of having to write it in the Book 
 of Judgment, so that by-and-by when I found a 
 lost article I secretly pitched it overboard rather 
 than be blamed for finding it ; how, one Sunday 
 morning, the old man took an observation of the 
 sun and gave the data to me to work out the 
 reckoning, but was not pleased with my answer, 
 and accordingly grabbed me by the hair and lifted 
 me clean off the deck, so that I took care to get 
 my hair cut immediately ; and when the old man 
 made another observation that afternoon and gave 
 it to me in the same way and with the same 
 result, he grabbed for my hair again and, missing 
 that, lifted me off the deck by my ears, saying 
 he d " stretch em out as long as a jackass ! " 
 and this despite the fact that I was right and he 
 was wrong, for we were cruising down the line 
 and during the night we had crossed the Equator, 
 so that we had to apply our corrections differ- 
 
30 
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 ently ; and also how I stole the cabin molasses 
 keg while we were at Talcuhano, and sold the 
 molasses in apulparee on shore, upon agreement 
 that the empty keg must be brought aboard next 
 evening. But the ship sailed in the morning and 
 both keg and molasses were left behind. Think 
 of the fix that put me in ! Presently the steward 
 wanted some molasses for the " doctor" to cook 
 with, but where in the name of the Great 
 Horned Spoon was that precious molasses keg ? 
 Of course I knew nothing about it absolutely 
 nothing vastly less than nothing ! The men 
 searched everywhere, and the further they searched 
 the madder they got. They swore like great 
 whales. But that was not the worst of it. My con 
 science swore, too. The thought of lying galled 
 me and cut me, till at last I went to the old man 
 and confessed my crime. That made me feel a 
 whole lot better, but it made the old man feel a 
 whole lot worse ! " Blast you, boy, I ll get even 
 with you ! You just waltz forward and tell the 
 cooper I say to give you a dozen barrel-staves. 
 I m going to learn you a lesson that ll last you 
 way over into the next world ! " When I came 
 back with the barrel-staves, the old man stationed 
 me in the waist, where everybody on board could 
 watch me, and said, u Now, sonny wax, you take 
 
THE FATTED CALF. 31 
 
 this saw and this plane the carpenter s brought 
 you, and you make a new keg to take the place of 
 the one you ve stolen. Here s a chance to show 
 your talent. The crew 11 come around you and 
 give you advice once in a while and encourage 
 you, and when the pretty creature s all done 
 they ll hold up their hands and admire it ! " I 
 worked four days. At the end of that time I had 
 something in the shape of a keg, but it wouldn t 
 hold water or molasses any more than the " doc 
 tor s " cullender. When these four days of atone 
 ment were over, the captain told me to quit. 
 I quitted. 
 
 How swiftly that pleasant evening ran by ! 
 The merry party broke up all too soon, I thought. 
 And yet not too soon. For one reason, at least, I 
 was glad it was over. Now I should see Dorothy 
 home. 
 
 It was in the doorway, after the general and 
 particular good-nights, that I asked her if I might. 
 
 Oh, tragical deception ! The Girl gave me one 
 defiant flash from her brown eyes, and ran like 
 a deer ! 
 
 That was the last I saw of her. 
 
 I went home alone. 
 
 Six weeks later I sailed away in the Balaena, 
 sperm-whaling again. 
 
THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 
 
 THE case of Dorothy being now got well out 
 of the way, I turn, and not without a grateful 
 sense of relief, to weightier considerations. 
 
 For this gam of mine you know the term ? 
 is meant to set forth the grave as well as 
 the trivial interests of that young madcap who 
 was so early, and withal so auspiciously, put afloat 
 in the whaling ship Swift. It would, in truth, 
 be far from fair to leave the reader in possession 
 of the startling revelations of the last chapter, 
 unless, over against those light and altogether 
 frivolous narratives, be set some mention of the 
 serious business of whaling, its toil, its peril, 
 its joy and thrill, to say nothing of its magical 
 fascination for a boy of fifteen. 
 
 Pleasantly my memory runs back sixty years to 
 the day of our departure. Stars and stripes at the 
 peak, Blue Peter at the fore ; officers and crew 
 on board ; four boats on the cranes ; and the hold 
 filled with white oak casks and a stock of pro 
 visions to last three years and more; then, as 
 somebody or other says, "Waiting is what?" 
 
 Waiting is the pilot. But, once aboard, his 
 majesty takes command, and the voyage is begun. 
 
THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 33 
 
 The captain, while the pilot remains in the ship, 
 is a mere inactive looker-on, a person of no more 
 consequence than a passenger or a spare figure 
 head. 
 
 " Mr. Mate, are you all ready ? " 
 
 " All ready, sir ? " 
 
 " Then heave ahead ! " 
 
 " Aye, aye, sir. Man the windlass ! " 
 
 Now comes the confusion, the hurrying and 
 blundering, invariably seen on board a ship when 
 she is getting under way with a crew made up 
 largely of green hands ; then an attempt on the 
 part of the officers to bring something like order 
 out of this hurly-burly ; and while at every turn 
 of the powerful windlass the chain cable rattles 
 heavily on deck, the Swift walks steadily up to 
 her anchor as if impatient for the word to spread 
 her white wings and be away. 
 
 " A-vast heaving," shouts the first officer. " A 
 short stay peak, sir ! " 
 
 "Aye, aye," responds the pilot. 
 
 " Let fall and sheet home top-s ls and to - 
 gal n-s ls ! " 
 
 Away sprang half a dozen men aloft, and soon 
 the broad sheets of canvas are unfurled and hauled 
 home and the yards are mast-headed. 
 
 Next a volley of incomprehensible orders : 
 
 3 
 
34 THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 
 
 " Brace head yards a-starboard ! " 
 
 " Lay helm aport ! " 
 
 " Heave up the anchor ! " 
 
 The first mate answers, " All away, sir ! " and 
 you know then that the good ship has loosed her 
 hold on terra firma, and you watch her move 
 ments, as gracefully as a girl in a minuet she 
 turns her head seaward. 
 
 The pilot springs to the bow, now and again 
 shouting his orders to the helmsmen, who invari 
 ably echoes the words, that there may be no 
 possibility of mistake. 
 
 And so, with a breeze fresh and free, we sped 
 down the bay, borrowing a little, now on one 
 shore, then on the other, or shaving close to some 
 rocky ledge, as our sharp-eyed, skillful guide 
 might direct, in order to shorten our course from 
 the confines of harbor to the freedom of the 
 open sea. 
 
 A little farther, and we open up Gay Head 
 lighthouse on the western end of Martha s Vine 
 yard, so called from the abundance of wild grape 
 vines growing there. Once outside, the tiny pilot- 
 boat, which has been dodging about the heavy 
 ship like a will-o -the-wisp, shoots alongside^ and 
 his lordship the pilot and our friends, mostly 
 men of the sea, hasten to make their adieus, and 
 
THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 35 
 
 descend to the restless little craft that will soon 
 take them back to their homes. The lingering 
 grasp of hands, the ill-concealed tremor of fare 
 wells, and the moistened, glistening eye, tell of 
 the friendship of men who have together battled 
 with the giant seas and fierce winds of the Horn, 
 who have stood shoulder to shoulder when short 
 ening the wings of their hurrying ship in the 
 shortrlived gales of the Equator, and who have 
 for long years shared alike in common hardships, 
 joys and sorrows. 
 
 The little fairy shoots ahead, and, flying up into 
 the wind, is soon on our weather beam, homeward 
 bound. Three rousing cheers from her deck, and 
 three from the outward bound, and we are alone 
 on the sea, with nothing binding us to the shore 
 but memories of the past and hopes for the future ! 
 
 And now, indeed, though with everything yet 
 to learn, I was fairly made a sailor of. There 
 was no possible back-wending, however I might 
 thereafterward mope and whimper. Accordingly 
 I turned my heart manfully toward my strange, 
 new life and faced it with earnest cheer. 
 
 The first day out, the ship s crew is divided into 
 two watches, larboard and starboard, the former 
 always headed by the first officer and the latter by 
 the second. The men are mustered aft and the 
 
36 
 
 THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 
 
 rules of the ship laid down to them. At seven 
 that evening, the watch is set, the second officer 
 always taking the first night watch from the home 
 port, and those not on duty go below and sleep 
 if they can. Next morning all hands are called 
 aft again, this time for choosing boat s crews. 
 The first officer takes precedence by selecting 
 one man, followed in turn by the second, third, 
 and fourth mates, each choosing one, until every 
 boat has a crew standing by her side. Then 
 follows, usually, the emphatic caution, "Now 
 remember to which you belong, and bear a hand 
 when she s called away ! " 
 
 And what of the voyage ? Southward ? Yes, 
 in the main ; crossing the Gulf Stream ; battling, 
 stripped for the fight, with many a heavy gale ; 
 passing, with men all the while at our mastheads, 
 through the " horse latitudes ; " lowering our 
 boats, now and then, to give our whalemen 
 practice in rowing ; and taking advantage, now, 
 of every slant of wind to press on our way toward 
 the stormy Horn. 
 
 Days and long weeks go by, nor are we alone 
 in the tedious struggle. Several sails are in sight, 
 all striving to get south. 
 
 And so, with bracing round, or squaring the 
 yards, making and shortening sail, and backing 
 
THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 37 
 
 and filling generally, we get a sharp squall, with 
 rain, from the eastward, and then the old salts 
 cast at each other significant glances, which, if 
 rightly interpreted, would say, "I believe we ve 
 got the Trades at last ! " After a few hours, the 
 wind moderates and hauls to the northward. All 
 sail is set again, with the breeze fresh and free, 
 and we go bowling along to the southward at the 
 rate of ten knots an hour. 
 
 Oh, the beautiful world of waters ! Almost 
 every day we pass ships showing the flags of 
 different nations, some near and others in the far 
 distance, all under a press of canvas, and all seem 
 ing to revel in the bright sunshine and the breeze. 
 The water, too so warm and so transparent 
 is full of life. Porpoises, dolphins, albicore, and 
 barricota are gambolling and sporting in the sum 
 mer sea. Thousands of birds are on the wing or 
 resting on the waves, while not infrequently a 
 huge fin-back, or sulphur whale rolls lazily along, 
 now throwing clouds of misty spray into the air, 
 and again lashing the water into foam with its 
 broad flukes, doubtless to rid himself of the 
 numerous parasites which persistently strive to 
 fasten themselves upon these worthless vagabonds. 
 Vitality and loveliness are above, beneath and 
 around us, and we seem verily to be sailing on a 
 
38 THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 
 
 sea of enchantment. The stars seem nearer, and 
 shine and twinkle with that wonderful bright 
 ness seen only in that southern hemisphere. The 
 North star has dipped into the ocean, not to rise 
 again until we cross the Equator on the Pacific 
 ocean. Instead we gaze in novel delight upon 
 the Southern Cross, and we are constantly looking 
 for that mysterious and ghostlike thing known to 
 seamen as the Magellan cloud, and said to mark 
 the entrance to the famous straits of that name. 
 It is enough to make a man quote the spirited 
 lines of Kipling : 
 
 " O, the blazing tropic night when the wake s a welt of light 
 
 That holds the hot sky tame, 
 
 And the steady forefoot snores through the planet-powdered floors, 
 Where the scared whale flukes in flame! " 
 
 Round the horn we fly, wrestling with giant 
 seas, and then, while penguins and fur-seals go 
 sporting and harking around the Swift, we pass 
 the rugged, half-glaciered island of Terra del 
 Fuego. Warmer, day by day, grows the air and 
 softer. At last, though never a spouter have we 
 yet raised out of the ocean, our hog-yoke tells us 
 we are upon the rich off-shore whaling grounds. 
 
 After we had been out from home eight long 
 months we chanced to speak the full-rig ship 
 
THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 39 
 
 William Rotch, and I then beheld a sight that 
 stirred my soul from truck to keelson and knocked 
 my youthful emotions galley-end wise. For the 
 Rotch had a monstrous whale, just taken, tethered 
 alongside. 
 
 There he lay, a bit ingloriously, to be sure, for 
 he was riding belly uppermost and tail foremost ; 
 but I felt like a Titan when I looked at him. 
 That was the prey I had gone a-seeking. I was a 
 fighter of dragons and worse. Oh, what more 
 heroic opportunity is offered to man or boy than 
 to join battle with such a monster as that? So 
 thought I (turning sea-green the while with envy 
 of yonder lucky crew) and longed, with inexpres 
 sible heart-hunger, for our own first whale-fight. 
 Moreover, I wished myself at that moment a 
 blood-thirsty pirate ; for, ethical considerations 
 aside, it would have been a gratifying relief to 
 my feelings had we boarded that ship, like 
 " gentlemen of fortune," bowie-knifed her gallant 
 crew, and stolen that whale away. 
 
 We kept company with the Rotch all night, and 
 we "gammed" that is to say, we exchanged 
 visits back and forth, and enjoyed a general 
 fo c sle pow-wow for ard while the officers made 
 merry in the cabins ; and particularly merry they 
 were that evening, too, for the old man s brother 
 
40 
 
 THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 
 
 was mate of the William Rotch, and the two had 
 not come face to face for many an eventful year. 
 
 But who knoweth what a day may bring forth ? 
 
 The sun came red and fierce and savage out of 
 the water. The morning mist lifted lazily off the 
 ocean. The long-expected happened. 
 
 Try how I will, I cannot recall in any former or 
 any subsequent experience, whether upon land or 
 sea, such a panic and stampede of emotions as in 
 stantly followed a ringing cry from the mast-head. 
 
 " There she blows ! " I heard a man shout. 
 
 A haze seemed to rush over my soul. All that 
 happened in the next five minutes is an utter con 
 fusion of tumultuous and ungovernable impres 
 sions. " All hands " must have been called, but 
 I could not hear the words. Every man sprang 
 toward his boat in fact, the movements of the 
 crew were automatic and inerrant yet I made 
 nothing coherent of their desperate hurry. Almost 
 in an instant the boats were lowered swift away ; 
 but not until three long whale-boats were dashing 
 out after the great leviathan and bent now upon 
 actual chase, did I come to myself far enough to 
 take good account of how this vast concern was 
 being brought to pass. 
 
 I have heard of buck fever. But, lands and 
 seas, it is nothing to whale fever ! 
 
THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN". 41 
 
 Nevertheless, in the midst of so crazed a mood, 
 I did, without so much as considering it, my 
 appointed duty which, for all that, was not diffi 
 cult ; being, as long beforehand I had been in 
 structed, to remain on board and do nothing. 
 That was a simple task, but by no means agree 
 able. 
 
 It was certainly a vivid contradiction, as I have 
 often since reflected, that while I, who was least in 
 the struggle, went clean daft for the moment, the 
 whale, who was of all concerned most gravely 
 implicated, lay spouting contentedly only a small 
 way from the Swift, and as wholly free from worry 
 or care as a comfortable cow nibbling pink and 
 white clover-tops. 
 
 " Boy," said the cooper, for he stood next to me 
 and together we watched the chase, " I ll bet my 
 go-ashore shirt and pantaloons they ll set you 
 a- turning that ar grin-stun ! " 
 
 This sage observation was the expression of a 
 splendid optimism, for when a whale is being cut 
 in, the cabin-boy turns the grindstone while the 
 cooper sharpens the cutting-spades. 
 
 " Oh, by Reuben Ranzo ! " yelled the cooper, 
 grabbing me by the collar, " They ll galley him ! " 
 
 Then, tightening his grip on my neck till I 
 thought he would strangle me, he emphasized his 
 
42 THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 
 
 sudden plunge into pessimism with a blast of 
 emphatic and unmistakable English. 
 
 Luckily for my continued existence, the fortunes 
 of the whale-chase suddenly grew brighter. The 
 cooper loosed his unconscious grip on my throat 
 and leaned out over the rail, his eyes bulging with 
 intense interest. 
 
 The chief mate s boat approached the column of 
 steam that rose from the whale s spout-hole. 
 
 The harpooner hurled his merciless iron. 
 
 The iron took hold in the quivering flesh of the 
 whale, and instantly the captain s boat dashed up 
 and a second harpoon went hurtling through the 
 air to plant itself close to the first. The whale 
 writhed with sudden pain and fright, but did not 
 go down. He preferred to fight. 
 
 The old man, however, had plans of his own ; 
 he would kill the whale, and that immediately. 
 
 He bellowed a hasty order to the mate, thinking 
 to drive the mate s boat out of his way, but he had 
 not calculated upon the stubborn ambition of that 
 hot-headed officer. The mate never budged. 
 
 Enraged at his opposition, the captain crowded 
 in between the mate and the monster, and ran his 
 lance into the whale s vitals. Then there was 
 such a commotion as I had never before witnessed. 
 The whale went into a frantic flurry, barrels-full of 
 
THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 43 
 
 rich, dark blood were hurled into the air from his 
 spout-hole, the boats dashed away from him as 
 they would from an enraged sea-serpent, and 
 behold a half-dozen men floundering about in 
 the water ! 
 
 " Stoven ! " yelled the cooper, renewing his 
 unconscious assaults upon my collar. " Served 
 him dead right, I swear ! An bless ye, boy, the 
 old lobster-back can t swim a stroke ! " 
 
 Indeed he could not. There was the captain in 
 the water, as helpless as a lady, and two of his 
 men were trying their best .to keep him from 
 sinking, while one of the two uninjured boats was 
 coming up to take him aboard. 
 
 " Same old yarn," said the cooper. " I ve sailed 
 with the old man five year if I ve sailed a day, an 
 I tell ye, boy, he s done this lubberly trick forty 
 times over. Gits wearisome, now an then, dead 
 wearisome for them Jacks to float a poor lubber 
 that won t learn swimmin , and dead wearisome 
 for poor old Chips to have to mend the old man s 
 boat after every blessed chase." 
 
 " Then why doesn t the captain learn to swim?" 
 
 The cooper ventured no answer. He was 
 watching the mate getting a line fast to Old 
 Blubber. Suddenly he bethought himself of 
 grindstone and spades, and as quickly was off to 
 
44 THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 
 
 make ready for the work that would turn me into 
 a slavish minion. 
 
 Even before the boats had come in and had got 
 the whale alongside and well into the fluke-chains, 
 the grinding of spades began. 
 
 Often and often I had heard men of the sea tell 
 how a whale was cut in and tried out, but now, 
 with my own lucky eyes, I was to see the thing 
 done. 
 
 But before I describe how the whale was cut in, 
 I must say something about whales in general. 
 
 There are many kinds, but only two are of 
 importance to whalemen. The right whale is 
 sought for his bone. The sperm whale is sought 
 for his blubber. We of the Swift were sperm 
 whaling. 
 
 Pictures of whales are uniformly deceptive. 
 They give the impression that a good part of the 
 animal (not fish, a whale is a hot-blooded mam 
 mal) can be seen above the surface of the sea. 
 They also indicate that a whale s spout is made 
 of water. It is no such thing. All you can 
 commonly see of a whale from the ship s deck is 
 his spout and that is a mere column of vapor. 
 It s his breath. Get that once in mind and you ll 
 never call a whale a fish. You never saw a fish 
 breathe air. You never found a fish warm enough 
 
THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 45 
 
 to belch out white vapor on a summer s day like a 
 steamboat. 
 
 Such, then, is the whale s spout. And by the 
 spout the two kinds of whales, sperm and right, 
 can be distinguished. A sperm whale has but one 
 spout-hole, and throws the spout forward at an 
 angle of about forty-five degrees a thick spout 
 and not very high, rising from a point near the 
 whale s " nose." A right whale has two spout- 
 holes, very close together. They are about 
 eighteen feet from the end of his head and, of 
 course, much nearer his lungs than is the case 
 with the sperm whale. Consequently the vapor 
 shoots up higher and as straight as a mast. It 
 spreads as it rises. I suppose, too, that the big 
 ness of a whale is something few landsmen could 
 well give account of. As a matter of fact, a sixty- 
 foot whale is about as big as you will ever see. 
 Big enough, says any whaleman big enough to 
 serve as a very worthy adversary to pigmy man 
 who goes to slay him ! 
 
 Very naturally you ask, as Brutus did (or was 
 it Cassius ? ) : " What meat has this, our Caesar 
 fed on, that he is grown so great ? " 
 
 That depends on your whale. The sperm 
 whale, having teeth, lives on deep-sea jelly-fish. 
 The right whale, which is as toothless as any 
 
46 THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 
 
 dotard, lives on a tiny red creature called brit, no 
 larger than a spider, but so numerous as to color 
 the water a yellowish red over whole acres. 
 
 It is because of his choice of diet that the right 
 whale has his mouth filled with a huge sieve of 
 whalebone. That sieve is to let the brit through 
 and to shut bigger sea-things out. 
 
 The arrangement is a decided success. I have 
 seen a right whale make a scoop of his broad lips 
 and rush through a field of brit (like a snow- 
 plow through a drift) and leave a trail of blue 
 water behind him. That is a sight to remember 
 and also a sound to remember, for when a right 
 whale is feeding he spouts with tremendous force. 
 At such a time you will have no hope of striking 
 him. 
 
 But right whales don t concern me nor do I 
 concern right whales. We were after oil and we 
 wanted sperm whales or none. 
 
 The oil is made from the blubber, mainly, and 
 the blubber covers the whale like a thick coating 
 of fat pork. In one sense it is a blanket; it 
 keeps the whale warm in the coldest sea-water. 
 In another sense it is a shell or even a padded 
 coat ; it relieves the tremendous pressure of the 
 water upon the whale s body when he sounds to 
 the depths of the sea. 
 
THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 47 
 
 Sperm whales have, as already intimated, their 
 ups and downs. A large sperm whale remains 
 under water from forty-five minutes to an hour 
 and a quarter. That is a fact to go by. When a 
 whale has sounded and you are waiting for him to 
 come up, it is a relief to know that some sort of 
 limit is set upon his delay. But that is not all. 
 You can judge where he will come up. For a 
 whale travels, unless vigorously disturbed, about 
 two miles an hour. So you note which way he 
 headed when he sounded, and you measure off two 
 miles in that direction, and you know where to 
 meet your friend again. This is an infallible rule 
 whenever it works. 
 
 But a whale has something beside ups and 
 downs and blubber. He has a marvellous 
 sagacity. By some mysterious process, which 
 I suppose the Society for Psychical Research 
 would call "thought transference/ whales pass 
 the news of disaster from one end of a school 
 to another. When one of the company is 
 wounded, every whale within a radius of four 
 miles is advised of the fact. Sometimes the 
 alarm will bring speedy assistance. That gives 
 the whaleman only a better chance to ply his 
 gainful trade. Sometimes a retreat is ordered. 
 The whole squadron will dash away as by some 
 
48 THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 
 
 instantaneous common impulse, evidently terror- 
 struck. 
 
 Can a sperm whale be called a globe-trotter ? 
 Be that as it may, the sperm whale migrates far 
 and wide. Ships cruise on the shores of Chili and 
 Peru at a distance of from two to one hundred 
 leagues from the shore, and you will often see 
 both in- and off-shore vessels doing nothing. At 
 other times all will be engaged. "Where were the 
 whales while the ships lay idle ? Roving over the 
 broad seas, no doubt, and many a mile away, 
 a- taking of their ease. 
 
 It is known to a solid certainty that whales 
 have been harpooned in the Atlantic ocean, and 
 have been afterward taken in the Pacific. The 
 marks on the irons proved the identity of the 
 whale every time. Old Blubber seems to travel 
 for change of scene. It is clear that he is not led 
 to migrate by any fear of the whalemen. Indeed, 
 whales are not easily driven away from their 
 feeding-ground by ships. 
 
 But whatever the ups and downs of that whale 
 alongside the Swift, and whatever the vicissitudes 
 of his travelling days, one thing was clear. That 
 whale was dead. Like Marley of blessed memory, 
 he was dead as a door-nail. Unlike Marley, how 
 ever, he could never come to life again. They 
 were cutting him in. I saw it done. 
 
THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 49 
 
 I beheld two stages slung over the side of the 
 ship, each stage six feet long and a foot wide. 
 Men stood upon the stages with sharp spades 
 one to cut the blubber, the other to kill the sharks 
 that would have devoured our prize. 
 
 I saw an aperture made near the whale s fin. I 
 saw the great hook inserted. I saw a semi-circle 
 cut around the hook. 
 
 Then they took the falls to the windlass. The 
 windlass wound in the falls. The falls passed 
 through a block at the main-mast head. The falls 
 then became the tackle, heaved hard at the iron 
 hook, and stripped the blubber from the whale. 
 
 The blubber came off in a continuous spiral 
 strip. The whale meanwhile kept turning over 
 and over in the water. The ripping of the blubber 
 from the carcass was guided by the sharp spade of 
 the officer on the stage. 
 
 I saw a strip of white, pork-like blubber, 
 twenty-five feet long and five feet wide, hoisted 
 into a perpendicular position and its top touch 
 ing the mast-head. Then they cut the piece 
 ( "blanket-piece," they said) loose from the whale 
 and lowered the blubber into the ship s hold 
 between decks, at the same time attaching the 
 other tackle to a fresh cut in the whale s flesh and 
 preparing to raise another blankei>-piece. 
 
50 THAT GREAT LEVIATHAN. 
 
 I saw this process repeated until the blubber 
 was stripped from the whale. 
 
 I saw the head cut off from the huge beast 
 and hoisted on deck. I felt the great ship 
 strain. The standing-rigging on the starboard 
 side slackened. The mast bent over like a whip- 
 stock. I saw the Swift listed till her plank-shear 
 was nearly level with the water. 
 
 A filthy column of black smoke rose out of the 
 try-works. They were cutting the blubber into 
 horse-pieces, mincing these pieces, and putting the 
 hashed blubber into huge pots with brick flooring 
 under them and a blazing fire of blubber scraps 
 blazing around them. Thence the oil passed into 
 a huge copper cooler and thence in turn into casks. 
 
 They made merry over the boiling. They 
 nibbled bits of fried blubber, and they fried 
 doughnuts in the grease. 
 
 The whole ship was befouled, but we soon had 
 her cleaned up again, man-o -war fashion ; and 
 what was better yet, we coopered a hundred 
 barrels of oil. 
 
 " Lands and seas," said I to myself, " this is the 
 biggest business afloat or ashore." 
 
 But as yet I had not chased a whale. 
 
MARQUESAS ISLANDS. 
 
 WE whaled on the equator, crossing it almost 
 daily, until we arrived in the longitude of the 
 Marquesas, or Washington Islands, when we 
 hauled south, and made the fine harbor in 
 Nukahiva, for a stay of two weeks to procure 
 wood, water, potatoes, bananas, etc. The natives 
 of these islands at this time, 1837, were con 
 sidered the handsomest race of all the islands of 
 the Pacific Ocean, the men of fine stature, the 
 women of delicate features and of quite light 
 complexion. The inhabitants of the port were 
 friendly, but needed close watching, as their 
 thieving propensities were very strong. On all 
 other parts of the island they were very savage 
 and cannibals. When leaving this island, we 
 took with us an Englishman and a Sandwich 
 Islander as interpreters, and ran over to the 
 island of Roa Poua, about thirty miles distant 
 and one of the same group, for further recruits 
 and pigs. Arriving after a few hours sail, the 
 captain, with two boats crews and interpreters, 
 pulled in to the principal bay; and, after telling 
 the chief what was wanted, left the Sandwich 
 Islander (who was of large stature, fat and sleek) 
 
52 MARQUESAS ISLANDS. 
 
 to have the recruits, pigs, etc., at the landing 
 ready for him to take off in the morning. On 
 returning, the chief mate, with two boats crews 
 and the English interpreter, pulled in to another 
 bay, and landed himself and interpreter, with 
 boats afloat and oars ready for a spring in case 
 of a surprise. Our rule in those days was, that 
 if the women and girls were at the shore, we 
 were comparatively safe from attack by the 
 natives. At this landing neither men nor women 
 were to be seen, and, fearing ambush, we left 
 for the ship. When the captain left the 
 Sandwich Islander on the shore for the night, 
 he took the chief s son as hostage for the safety 
 of our interpreter. 
 
 With the ship off and on through the night, 
 in the morning we stood in toward the upper 
 bay. When a canoe came off, with a New 
 Zealand native, who came on board and gave 
 us a full account of how they had killed the 
 Sandwich Islander and eaten him, with a descrip 
 tion of the festivities or revels during the night, 
 the captain ordered the ship put away for 
 Nukahiva. When on her course, with yards 
 trimmed, tacks down, and sheets aft, with a 
 spanking trade wind breeze on the quarter, there 
 comes a scene which would require an artist to 
 
MARQUESAS ISLANDS. 53 
 
 describe. The first officer goes to his stateroom 
 for the knives for the purpose of having the 
 top and top gallant masts scraped. He, without 
 giving any thought to our hostage, comes up 
 the gangway with the glittering knives, six of 
 them, in his hand, when, with a scream, our 
 hostage, the handsome boy, nude with the excep 
 tion of tapa about his loins, springs into the 
 bow boat, and, with the agility of a cat, runs 
 on the outer gunwale into the waist boat, reaches 
 in and catches the end of the main clew garnet, 
 and putting a noose around his neck and on to 
 the outer gunwale of the waist boat, is ready for 
 a spring. 
 
 Catching on to the situation in a flash, the 
 mate dropped the knives and held up both hands, 
 while our interpreter explained and persuaded 
 the hostage to unloosen the rope from about 
 his neck and come on deck. Then he told us 
 that as they had killed and eaten our man, he 
 supposed the knives were to be used to kill him, 
 and to be used in eating him. This boy 
 remained on the ship for a year or more, and 
 rowed the tub oar in the mate s boat. 
 
 Reaching Nukahiva, the mate was ordered by 
 the captain to take two boats, provided with 
 trade, well-armed, and with the English inter- 
 
54 MARQUESAS ISLANDS. 
 
 preter, and go into Typee Bay, in further 
 pursuit of fresh pork, fruit, etc. Sailing up the 
 large, open bay, we found three smaller bays 
 or inlets, with grand and beautiful scenery 
 Entering one of these, we arrived at the point 
 where we met the friendly tribe with their chief 
 with his splendid physique and the best assurance 
 of safety. The boats were at once surrounded 
 with women, girls and children, in number one 
 hundred or more, swimming and floating about 
 us, until our boats were loaded with fat porkers, 
 etc. After making presents to the chief, we up 
 anchor and left, having made a successful trading 
 trip. Arriving on board, the ship was put away 
 for the cruising grounds, about the north end 
 of New Zealand, the Vasques ground, and off 
 the island of Eoa, one of the Tonga or Friendly 
 Islands, also taking one season on the south side 
 of Upolu, one of the Samoan group. 
 
BEACH COMBERS. 
 
 DURING our cruise around the Navigator 
 Islands, and while we were sailing along the coast 
 of Upolu, hugging the shore country-whaling, 
 as they say a canoe came off with several 
 natives and a white man as interpreter. They 
 were anxious to trade, offering fowl and fruit in 
 exchange for cotton cloth. 
 
 While the traders were on board, the man at 
 the masthead sang out, "There she blows!" and 
 sure enough there was a school of sperm whales, 
 cows and calves, going to the leeward. We kept 
 off for them, and, in doing so, passed another 
 canoe, steered by a white man, who had put off 
 from another village to trade. Under the 
 circumstances, the old man thought best not to 
 heave to for them whales won t wait, and 
 traders will so they went away for the land, 
 the white man cursing and swearing and 
 threatening to seize and hold our boats if we 
 attempted to land at their village. 
 
 We came up with the whales, lowered our 
 boats, and were soon fastened to three. In a short 
 time we had them turned up and dead. We left 
 them with a "waif" that is, a small flag 
 
56 BEACH COMBERS. 
 
 stuck in each, and it then became the duty of the 
 officer on board to take the whales alongside, 
 while we went in pursuit of others. It was not 
 long before two boats, the captain s and the 
 mate s, struck again, and soon had the old flukers 
 spouting blood. The first and second mates were 
 left with these two, while the captain went on 
 board ship. There he asked the third mate, who 
 was on board as ship-keeper, in what direction 
 the three whales were which we had waifed. 
 The poor fool could not tell. All he could say 
 was they were to windward, and he had passed 
 them. The old man was enraged at this reply, 
 for there were three fine whales, which, if the 
 third mate had done his duty, ought to have been 
 taken alongside and made fast with fluke-chains 
 and towed after the boats in chase. As it was, 
 we found only one of the waifed whales, for it 
 was near dark when we began to search for them. 
 Three whales, however, were already ours, and 
 together they made seventy-five barrels of oil. 
 
 After stowing down the oil in the hold, we 
 stood in for the island and went on shore to 
 trade. And now we feared the consequence of 
 passing that canoe without allowing her to come 
 alongside, for we had none of us forgotten the 
 threats and curses that promised us trouble if we 
 
BEACH COMBERS. 57 
 
 landed at their village. The beach-comber tried 
 to have the islanders seize and detain our boats 
 for not having allowed them to come aboard. 
 Nevertheless, we made bold to go ashore, and it 
 was only by sheer luck that we ever got off 
 alive ; for we happened to have among us a 
 fellow who understood the native language, and 
 who overheard the islanders hatching up a 
 murderous scheme to " do for" the whole lot of 
 us. This chance interpreter ran and told the old 
 man, who ordered the boats to put off to the ship. 
 Every Jack tar of us knew that that meant 
 stepping lively, and we wasted no time. We 
 launched those boats as quick as coast-guards, but 
 we were not a moment too soon. For no sooner 
 had we bent to our oars than the whole mob 
 of savages made a rush for us, yelling like a 
 pack of lunatics, and running into the water 
 after our boats, but not succeeding in their 
 attempts to get hold of them. The whole brutal 
 job was the work of that villainous beach-comber, 
 and shows how low a white man will get when he 
 sells his birthright and goes to live with savages. 
 The worst insult you can offer an able seaman 
 is to call him a beach-comber. 
 
 When we came home after that long, long 
 voyage, we had with us a boat-steerer from this 
 
58 BEACH COMBERS. 
 
 very island, no beach-comber either, and 
 thereby hangs a tale. He was the only survivor 
 of two boats crews of twelve men from the 
 full-rigged ship William Penn, of Falmouth. 
 The Penns boats were captured and their crews 
 murdered, all but this one man. He was on 
 the island several months eking out a horrible 
 existence, and expecting his life might be taken 
 at any time. It was on a previous voyage in 
 these waters that our captain found the fellow 
 on the island, and helped him to make his escape. 
 He had shipped again with the old man after 
 that voyage was ended, and was still with us. 
 
 This is how the captain took him off. The 
 ship was cruising near Upolu, and the old man 
 sent in boats to trade, going ashore in one of 
 them himself. On the beach he met this sailor, 
 who told his story and begged the old man to 
 help him get away. The thing had to be 
 accomplished by stealth, for the islanders would 
 have butchered the whole crew if they had got 
 wind of the plan. There was a point about a 
 mile from the village which made out some 
 distance into the sea. This man was to go 
 there in the night, and a boat was to be sent 
 from the ship to take him off. It was a life 
 and death venture, for the reef stretched away 
 
BEACH COMBERS. 59 
 
 out into the sea, and the surf came pounding 
 down on those rocks with a roar like thunder. 
 No boat could ever live in such a sea, and there 
 was no hope of landing without smashing your 
 boat to match-wood. There was just one thing 
 to be done. The ship s boat must lie well off 
 the reef, and the man must plunge into those 
 bellowing breakers and swim for his life. If 
 he made it, well and good. If he didn t make 
 it, why death on the reef would be luxury 
 compared with death at the hands of those blood 
 thirsty wild men. So the terrible risk was 
 taken. The daring rush into the foam, the 
 desperate fight with the breakers, the long 
 struggle in the dark, and, at last, life and 
 liberty! They picked him up and took him 
 aboard the ship. He remained on her and came 
 home with her ; and he felt so grateful to his 
 deliverer that he shipped with him for another 
 voyage, which was his last. For then he married 
 a Boston lady and lived in that city until he 
 died, not long since, leaving a family to mourn 
 his loss. He was an esteemed friend of mine, 
 and his spirit has gone out, I trust, into the 
 Better Land. 
 
BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND 
 BACK AGAIN. 
 
 Escape me ? 
 Never, 
 Beloved! " 
 
 Browning. 
 
 " Tell me, messmate, why in the name of all 
 that s shipshape did you ever come to sea ? " 
 
 " Shiver my soul if I can tell ! " 
 
 " Til tell you, boy, Til tell you. You come to 
 sea just to see the world. Ain t I right, Jack ? 
 All you come for was just to see the world. You 
 wanted to clap your blinkin top-lights on Nuka- 
 hiva, an Upolo, an Hivaoa, an the Cape, an 
 Mahee, an all them high-saoundin places you 
 hearn tell on when you was knee-high to a marlin 
 spike." 
 
 The older man spoke with an air of preternatu 
 ral knowingness. He leaned forward insinuatingly 
 upon the stout iron hoop that ran under his arms. 
 The youth, as he listened to this relentless diag 
 nosis of his distemper, lolled back upon his own 
 iron hoop and thrust his half-akimbo elbows out 
 across it. The two whalemen were upon lookout 
 duty at the mainmast head of that staunch old 
 hooker, the whaling ship Swift. 
 
BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 61 
 
 "Taownsend," the old sea-dog continued, "I. 
 don t much blame you for coming, but by the 
 bloody wars you re a fool if you desert. We ve 
 had blasted poor luck, I know, blasted poor. And 
 I know, too, we ve all got to lose by it, every Jack 
 Tar of us, all the way from the old man on the 
 quarter-deck down to Charlie Robbins in the cabin. 
 Some ways I d rather be to sea in a merchantman 
 and git reg lar wages stid o goin by lays. But I 
 tell you, Taownsend, you re a blarsted ninny if 
 you try to get aout o this butter-box. First 
 place, them tattoo natives 11 make dunder-funk 
 o your tender timbers fore you been ashore half 
 a day. Nex place, you ll never git a lift off that 
 there island if you once git on it you ll just be 
 a low-daown beach comber all the rest o your 
 natchral days. Third place, the old man ll git the 
 darbies on you n less n a week an* then you ll be 
 back aboard o here an wishin you was plumb 
 dead." 
 
 A very determined look glaring out of the 
 old blubber hunter s sharp eyes showed that he 
 thought his logic invincible. 
 
 One fact, however, he had wholly overlooked. 
 Townsend was in debt to the old man. He had 
 shipped for a long lay and had a thumping big 
 bill for outfitting and board before we sailed from 
 
62 BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 
 
 old New Bedford. So if he remained in the Swift 
 throughout the voyage he would have little or 
 nothing coming to him at its conclusion. There 
 fore, from Townsend s standpoint it was worth 
 while to take big risks and try to ship again. 
 The venture involved no loss and a possible gain. 
 
 So, despite the grave counsel from the ancient 
 mariner, this daring young citizen of Rochester, 
 N. Y., gazed wistfully toward the splendid wooded 
 island one of the Navigator group, better known 
 under the name of Samoa which rose majesti 
 cally out of the ocean, green, luxuriant, fascinating. 
 It was scarce two miles away. 
 
 " My stars ! " said Townsend to himself, " my 
 stars, if I was only there ! " 
 
 No amount of good advice could change Town 
 send s determination to leave the ship. Old 
 Bowline might have informed the officers of Town 
 send s plans, but he thought he had talked the 
 boy out of his folly. So the project developed 
 quite as if it had suffered nothing by interference. 
 
 "We cruised so near the Samoa Islands that not 
 infrequently the natives would come off in canoes, 
 bringing the usual commodities fruit, cocoanuts, 
 fowl and pigs to trade for cotton cloth, gun 
 powder, iron hoops, and the trinkets and gimcracks 
 they always find so desirable. 
 
BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 63 
 
 It often happened that a canoe would bring 
 along as trader and interpreter some renegade 
 whaleman who had deserted his ship and turned 
 " beachcomber," living among the natives, and 
 little better than the worst of them. This is one 
 of the strangest things about sailoring. A sea 
 man s civilization will drop off like the cast skin 
 of a rattlesnake when he goes to live among 
 savages. 
 
 While trading was going on and it would 
 sometimes last two days at a stretch the old 
 man would keep one of the brown-skinned, yellow- 
 haired, frizzle-headed tatooed natives on board as 
 a hostage. The old man had learned caution by 
 bitter experience. At Hivaoa we had found it by 
 no means easy to keep the natives from kidnap 
 ping a red-haired sailor. They thought his scalp 
 worth more than his life. At Auhuga one of our 
 men was actually roasted and eaten. 
 
 That was a lesson to remember. We never 
 took chances after that. But with a native host 
 age on board the ship, we were not afraid to go a 
 long way in-shore in our boats, though we never 
 quite ventured to land. When the trading was 
 done and we were about to leave, we would send 
 the hostage off in one of our boats, and as soon as 
 we came within swimming distance of the shore 
 
64 BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 
 
 we would pitch him overboard and make him 
 paddle for terra fir ma. 
 
 Now it was on one of these occasions, when a 
 hostage was being returned to the bosom of his 
 tribe, that the Rochester boy found an opportun 
 ity to desert. He was in the boat as we took off 
 the native, and when the tatooed man was about 
 to start ashore, Townsend suddenly jumped over 
 board and swam for the land. The officer in 
 charge ordered him to return, but he never paid 
 the least attention just tumbled through the 
 surf, scrambled up the beach and made away 
 inland as fast as his truant heels could carry him. 
 
 " Blast my luck," said the officer, " blast my 
 ugly luck ! Now I ll have to face the music ! 
 Noiu the old man 11 make me waltz ! " But he 
 checked the outpouring of his chagrined rage. 
 He tried to recover something like dignity before 
 his men. The men, on their part, suppressed their 
 merriment. Without another word from anybody 
 the boat returned to the ship. 
 
 It was just as the second mate had predicted. 
 The old man flew into a terrible passion, swore 
 hideous blasts of blubber-slicer profanity, cursed 
 everybody and everything from the chief mate to 
 the carpenter s ditty-box, and vowed he d have 
 that Townsend back in his clutches again if he had 
 
BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 65 
 
 to chase him till the end of time. He didn t care 
 what it cost. Hed get even with that cussed 
 young beach-comber if he had to die for it, and 
 all the rest of us along with him. He d rather 
 get a good fierce grip on Ed. Townsend than try 
 out the last sperm whale in the South Pacific 
 he d be blowed if he wouldn t ! 
 
 But, as on former occasions, we saw the gale 
 blow by. The worse the old man raged the 
 sooner he would calm down. And when the 
 tempest was over, all that remained of the case 
 against Townsend was a sincere desire, with 
 a proportionate determination, to recover the 
 services of so good a sailor. 
 
 So the next day we stood in to another bay r 
 about four miles to the leeward of the place that 
 had witnessed Townsend s escape. There, unable 
 to drop our mud-hook, we lay off and on. 
 
 We had not been long in the bay before a canoe 
 came off with a white man and two natives. That 
 was just the very thing the old man wanted. He 
 received the visitors with eager welcome, invited 
 them into the cabin, ordered drinks for four, and 
 dismissed the steward, warning him to shut the 
 door tight behind him. 
 
 The quartette remained in solemn executive 
 session for half an hour. Then the cabin door 
 
66 BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 
 
 opened, the men came up on deck, and as the 
 visitors clambered down into their canoe again I 
 heard the old man whisper over the rail, " Now 
 remember, my man, two white flags and you get 
 your reward ! " 
 
 Then we stood off and put to sea, cruising the 
 grounds again looking for whales. 
 
 One warm, bright, clear-shining Southern morn 
 ing we were fanning along under a cloud of canvas 
 over a delightfully smooth sea, when a cry from 
 the clouds called down the spirited warning I had 
 heard on a former occasion : 
 
 " There she blows ! Sperm whale ! " 
 
 "Where away?" 
 
 There was breathless excitement on deck. My 
 heart hammered against my ribs. I shook with 
 bewildered suspense. 
 
 " Four points on the lee bow, sir." 
 
 The words stabbed through and through me. 
 
 "How far off?" 
 
 " Three miles, sir." 
 
 The captain was in his element. His eyes 
 blazed. His face was white. His voice was harsh 
 and strident. He was master of a splendid 
 occasion. 
 
 " Call all hands ! " he thundered. " Get your 
 boats ready ! Square the mainyard ! Put the 
 
BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 67 
 
 helm up and keep her off ! " Heavens, what 
 confusion ! 
 
 " Stand by your boats ! " 
 
 At that, every man knew his place and sprang 
 for it with an eager bound of joy. I was among 
 them. For the first time in my young life I was 
 to go in a whale-boat. I was in the mate s boat. 
 
 " Lower away boats ! " bellowed His Majesty. 
 
 Instantly the mate and the boat-steerer sprang 
 into the cedar boat one in either end, boat- 
 steerer forward, officer aft and our crew were 
 over the ship s side before the boat splashed in 
 the water. We pounced upon our thwarts, seized 
 our long oars, looked sharp astern, and took the 
 prompt word of command. I pulled after oar. 
 
 The sail was up in a twinkling. It bellied out 
 full. We dashed headlong after our prey. We 
 were in the lead. The captain and the second 
 mate followed close. 
 
 I shall never forget the dazzling sensations 
 of that first moment the tall ship, with her 
 checkered sides and her huge white davits ; the 
 two sharp-bowed clinker built boats five long 
 oars in each ; two on one side, three on the other ; 
 the sun-glint upon the oar-blades as they lifted 
 above the surface, the white splash when they 
 dipped again ; the rapid, nervous, brutal stroke ; 
 
68 BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 
 
 the pose of the officers as they stood in the stern- 
 sheets of the boats, each with his lifted left hand 
 holding the steering oar, and each with his right 
 hand pushing upon the stroke oar ; and, yet more 
 vivid, the one figure I could see in our own boat. 
 For the mate stood last, steering with one hand 
 and helping me row with the other. 
 
 How those men sprang to their oars it makes 
 my blood tingle to recall. The oars bent in the 
 water. We ripped through the waves, the spray 
 dashing high and white. We were chasing the 
 whale ! 
 
 And here is the wonderful thing. I had not yet 
 got a glimpse of the whale. In the confusion and 
 excitement of lowering away, I had not even seen 
 the column of vapor that marked him to view. I 
 sat toiling in that pitching and careening boat, 
 with my back toward the whale. 
 
 It was terrible going to my death, it might 
 be, and going backward ! 
 
 The mate s face reassured me. He was cool 
 and determined teeth clenched, eyes glaring, 
 brows knitted, but not a sign of anxiety. He 
 knew no such thing as fear. 
 
 He thrust out his chin. I could see the cords 
 draw stiff in his neck. His face was red from 
 exertion. Every nerve thrilled with a fierce joy. 
 
BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 69 
 
 He whispered encouragement to his crew hissed 
 it gasped it. 
 
 " Spring hard, my lively hearties ! Spring 
 hard ! Break a stick, will you ? will you ? break 
 a stick ! Come, come, come, spring hard ! " 
 
 We pulled like mad. 
 
 " Not a word not a word ! If you make the 
 least bit of noise I ll brain every one of you ! 
 Come, come, break an oar!" 
 
 We exerted ourselves to the uttermost. We 
 bent the oars till I thought they would snap 
 in two. 
 
 " Give away, boys ! Spring hard ! " 
 
 The captain tried his best to outfoot us. The 
 water leaped in foam around the prow of his boat. 
 Suddenly the mate s face changed. He bit his 
 lip. His eyes stared fixedly. He threw back 
 his head. 
 
 " Peak your oar," he hissed. Then he shouted, 
 " Stand up and let him have it ! " 
 
 I thought my heart would burst. Everything 
 swam before me. I gripped my oar tight. I 
 thought I was fainting. 
 
 " Starn all," the mate roared. " Starn all, and 
 get out of the suds ! " 
 
 I fell forward with my full weight upon my oar. 
 The mast and sail came down as by magic. The 
 
70 BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 
 
 mate rushed forward ; the harpooner rushed aft ; 
 they changed places. The line leaped out of its 
 Flemish coil in the tub. 
 
 We were fast to a whale ! 
 
 The whale sounded and the line flew after him. 
 It smoked around the loggerheard, it buzzed as it 
 raced past the men, it groaned in the chocks. 
 They poured water on the loggerhead to keep it 
 from taking fire. The whale, with two harpoons 
 in him, took two hundred fathoms of our line. 
 
 He was gone but five minutes. 
 
 Then, oh the horror! A vast, black, shining 
 mass stood up ten feet out of water on our lee 
 beam. It was the whale. He had come up head 
 first, a hundred feet away. 
 
 The boat-steerer swung the steering-oar with all 
 his might. The boat instantly turned half about. 
 
 " Haul line, all hands ! " whispered the boat- 
 steerer. The Manila line came in wet and heavy, 
 and ran back into the stern-sheets. We were 
 gaining upon our prey. 
 
 " Take your oars now." 
 
 Again we were brought with our backs to the 
 whale. The awful moment was at hand. Oh, for 
 eyes in the back of my head ! The officer must 
 already be standing up, lance in hand, ready to 
 strike the murderous blow. 
 
BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 71 
 
 The boat-steerer s mouth was half-open with 
 expectancy and behold ! Almost against our 
 boat, and just awash of the surface, the monstrous 
 black bulk of the whale ! He stretched huge and 
 dim under water. Only part of him could be 
 seen. A slanting column of hot white vapor stood 
 up ten feet tall, like a rakish mast. It was the 
 whale s spout. 
 
 When the mate s lance had been sent into the 
 whale s vitals, the boat dashed away from the 
 monster, and I got my first good view of him. 
 He was cutting and thrashing like a cat in a fit. 
 The water all round him was crimson. Jets of 
 thick, cloggy blood a hogsheadful at each jet 
 leaped six feet high from his spout-hole. Then 
 gradually the jets grew feebler. Then the blood 
 merely poured out. Then the whale took a swift, 
 wide circle against the sun, threw his whole mass 
 out of water, breaching; fell on his side with 
 a hideous, wallowing splash ; stuck one fin up, 
 quivering ; dropped his huge, ivory-toothed jaw, 
 and lay dead, in a lather of blood and foam ! 
 
 An involuntary yell of triumph went up simul 
 taneously from all three boats. 
 
 We rowed up to the whale, and before we 
 attached our tow-rope, the mate ran his lance into 
 the whale s eye to make sure the life was all gone 
 
72 BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 
 
 out of him. He never even quivered. So the 
 line was made fast to a slit cut in old Blubber s 
 spoui>hole, and we towed his huge carcass to the 
 Swift. On the way thither, Brother Bowline, 
 who was pulling bow oar, leaned forward between 
 strokes, and said, in jerky phrases interrupted by 
 his work, " I tell you, Charlie, young Townsend 
 would be sorry enough if he could see us now, 
 don t you say so, boy ? Never saw prettier 
 fight, no body hurt, nothin broke. Lord, how 
 I pity that fool on the island ! " 
 
 It amazed me to see how easily we towed the 
 tremendous, sixty-foot carcass. After we once 
 got the whale started he seemed to propel himself. 
 You would never think it from his " model," and 
 yet the big beast can run like a race-horse when 
 he s alive. The motion is all but effortless a 
 little squirming movement of the tail sends him 
 whizzing through the water. 
 
 We cut that whale in and boiled out his blubber. 
 
 Then we set about a most unaccountable task. 
 The old man ordered it and we had to obey, but 
 we growled while we worked. The task was no 
 less than the sending down of our light yards 
 top-gallants and royals and the striking of fore 
 and mizzen-top-gallant masts. There seemed to 
 be no need for such a procedure. There was only 
 
BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 73 
 
 a very light breeze blowing, and not a sign of a 
 storm anywhere. 
 
 Old Bowline thought the crew were being hazed. 
 He reminded his shipmates that the old man had 
 had a such times" before. Didn t every man 
 remember pounding the anchor hour after hour ? 
 Could anybody forget the unnecessary holyston 
 ing of the deck ? Had nobody any recollection of 
 wearing out his knees pushing a " prayer book " 
 and swearing inside his jumpers while he did it ? 
 
 I, for my part, had quite different suspicions. 
 I could not shake myself wholly free of the notion 
 that all this change aboard the Swift was in some 
 way connected with the old man s farewell admoni 
 tion to the beach-comber : " Remember, now. two 
 white flags, and you get your reward ! " 
 
 After ten days had gone by, an island rose 
 proudly out of the ocean. 
 
 It was the same green, wooded paradise we had 
 last put out from a beautiful, mountainous oasis, 
 if one may so speak, in the vast waste of blue 
 waters. 
 
 We stood in for the beach-comber s bay, my 
 fancy big with expectancy. I knew now why 
 the old man had disguised the ship. 
 
 It all fell out just as I had expected. We beat 
 our way up the harbor, and I watched the shore 
 
74 BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 
 
 with eager eyes. Presently I saw a canoe coming 
 off, dancing on the swell, her paddles dipped first 
 one side and then the other, six Kanakas on her 
 thwarts and a white man in either end. Each 
 white man held up a white flag. 
 
 Full of waggish fun, the old man made ready to 
 wear ship as soon as the canoe approached, and 
 when the Swift came round so as to expose the 
 five bold capitals painted across her stern, one of 
 the white flags went down as if the man in the 
 canoe s prow had suddenly been shot. The man 
 fell flat in the bottom of the canoe, burying his 
 face in his hands. 
 
 He was our man Townsend ! 
 
 The beach-comber brought the canoe alongside, 
 and her crew, Townsend not excepted, clambered 
 on board. 
 
 We shouted with wicked glee. What d I tell 
 you," said Old Bowline. " Didn t I tell you you 
 was a blarsted ninny ever to desert ? Now you ve 
 got your come-up-ance ! " I called out, " Hoist 
 by your own petard ; hanged on your own 
 gallows; caught by your own flag ! " But the 
 captain called us all aft and prepared to lay down 
 the law. 
 
 We stood in a sort of loose ring on the quarter 
 deck. Townsend faced the captain. Poor truant, 
 he was pale as the ship s courses ! 
 
BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. <0 
 
 The old man looked the picture and personifica 
 tion of awful wrath. 
 
 "Townsend," he began in a sepulchral tone 
 that made us all shiver but he never got any 
 further with his intended oration. 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha-a-a ! " he bellowed. " Thought 
 you d run away from the captain of the whaling 
 ship Swift , didrit you f Oh, ha ! ha ! ha ! 
 ha-a-a ! Come, my hearties, just tow this deserter 
 before the mast and tell him what you think of 
 him ! Far as I m concerned I ve got only this to 
 say : if the poor fool plays me another trick like 
 this, I ll make it hot for him ! " 
 
 Then, turning to the beach-comber, he said, 
 " We ll settle accounts in the cabin, if you like ! " 
 
A GLIMPSE OF SAMOA. 
 
 IT was in 1839 that the Swift visited Apia on 
 the Samoan group, now famous as having been 
 the home of the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, 
 and for years the only place where he could live, 
 for any less beneficent climate would have been 
 death to him. 
 
 At the time the Swift touched there little 
 missionary work had then been done, and lawless 
 ness and license made the place anything but 
 a pleasant one in which to take liberty. But 
 sailors are bold by nature and by habit, and the 
 Swift s crew were many times ashore during the 
 fifteen months when the vessel was cruising in 
 the vicinity. One village, to distinguish it from 
 others, was called "Devil s Town," a most 
 appropriate name. 
 
 A short time before the arrival of the Swift 
 a vessel had foundered on the reefs, and from the 
 wreck there had been brought ashore several 
 hundred dollars worth of copper. This was 
 secured by the Swift s captain by the payment 
 of some cotton cloth, two barrels of rum, and 
 a few other things of comparatively slight value. 
 
A GLIMPSE OF SAMOA. 77 
 
 From the island the ship was provided with 
 " yams," a vegetable somewhat resembling the 
 potato, some of which weigh from twelve to 
 fifteen pounds ; "tarrow," a kind of Samoan turnip, 
 and different kinds of fruit. 
 
 The Swift brought away from Samoa a white 
 man, who had married a native. He was loth 
 to leave her, and she was almost heart-broken at 
 losing him, but the thought of home was stronger 
 than his affection for his native bride, and so 
 they parted. 
 
 The soil of the Samoan group, or Navigator s 
 Islands, is enriched by the decomposition of 
 volcanic rocks, and so the vegetation is luxurious 
 and the flowers are exceedingly brilliant. 
 
 In 1830 the Christian religion began to work 
 its slow change among the people, and now 
 nearly all of the inhabitants are Christians. 
 
 In 1889 the three powers most interested in 
 the matter England. Germany and the United 
 States recognized the independence of Samoa, 
 and its right to elect its own chief or king 
 according to its own laws and customs, making at 
 the same time, however, provision for the 
 establishment of a superior court for the adjust 
 ment of claims and titles to lands, the raising of 
 taxes, and the restriction of the sale and use of 
 
78 A GLIMPSE OP SAMOA. 
 
 arms and intoxicating liquors. In spite of all 
 this, in 1892 there began a civil war, which was 
 only terminated by the intervention of German, 
 British and American war vessels. 
 
 Up and down went the Swift after leaving 
 Samoa, calling at this port for a little stay, 
 putting in at that harbor for a day s replenishing 
 and refreshment, and by-and-by the anchor was 
 made ready to throw in the harbor of that land 
 which poets have sung and sailors have loved 
 through many and many a year; the loveliest 
 and most welcome of all the islands of the 
 sleeping southern sea, Otaheite. 
 
 Leaving these islands and after cruising for 
 several months, looking from the masthead, with 
 not less than four men on the top gallant cross- 
 trees, from daylight to dark, and finding the 
 sperm whales not plenty, we put away for the 
 Society Islands. After a pleasant passage, w r e 
 had the most beautiful island of all the Pacific 
 in sight, and with Kanaka Jim Crook Toe as pilot 
 through the Towenor passage we passed inside 
 the reefs. With a spanking breeze we run down, 
 with coral reefs on either side of the ship, for 
 three or four miles to one of the finest harbors in 
 the world, Papiete, in the island of Tahiti, 
 where we found six or eight American whalers, 
 
A GLIMPSE OF SAMOA. 79 
 
 one French frigate, and two sloops of war. 
 Having hauled the ship in shore, one chain cable 
 was taken from stern port to shore and secured 
 to the breadfruit tree, and, with one anchor 
 ahead and both chains hove taut, the ship was 
 safely moored. 
 
 This was the first port for eighteen months, 
 with anchor only dropped once during that time ; 
 and in all this eighteen months without a 
 symptom of scurvy or sickness of any kind, as 
 I recollect it. 
 
 Having the ship safely moored, the captain 
 comfortably established at his hotel on shore, the 
 first officer, by order of the master, commences 
 overhauling and putting in order from the rails 
 to truck, sending every yard down, loosening 
 truss and yardarm bands, new parcelling under 
 them and replacing, seeing that every block with 
 sheaves and pins was in order, stripping the top 
 mast with top gallant masts standing, putting the 
 rigging in good order, all being fitted, masts 
 stayed, standing rigging set up, yards crossed, 
 running rigging rove, sails bent and furled snug, 
 and all yards squared. After giving all hands 
 several days run on shore, and having filled 
 our water casks, taken wood for the season, taken 
 on board potatoes and yams, filled our lower 
 
80 A GLIMPSE OF SAMOA. 
 
 rigging with bunches of bananas, and one boat 
 overhead on her keel nearly filled with luscious 
 oranges, the ship was unmoored, with the captain 
 on board and Crooked Toed Jim as pilot, we left 
 one of the finest ports of the world, and the island 
 of Tahiti, the garden of the Pacific Islands, and a 
 hospitable and clever native people, who at that 
 time were being demoralized and decimated 
 through their intercourse with what we term 
 the higher civilization. 
 
 We proceeded on our voyage, or cruise, to the 
 Vasquez ground and New Zealand section, in 
 sight and out of sight of "French Rock," a small 
 island or rock rising perpendicularly from the 
 ocean, several hundred feet high, located north 
 of North Cape of New Zealand, which was 
 formerly a favorite feeding ground for the sperm 
 whale. Cruising here for several months, then 
 further south for right whales, and after taking 
 several, the captain put away for ports on the 
 Chilean coast. 
 
WATERED RUM AT OTAHEITE. 
 
 THE Captain tells some of his experiences at 
 Otaheite, which show that though it was a natural 
 paradise, its inhabitants were fond of rum. He 
 says : 
 
 While lying at Otaheite, one of the Society 
 Islands, we retailed about fifty barrels of rum to 
 the natives and ship s crews. As cabin-boy, I was 
 kept on board to sell it. The price was six dollars 
 a gallon, or a dollar a bottle. We were now 
 eighteen months from home, and we had lost some 
 from leakage. To make up the loss, the captain 
 ordered me to draw two pails-full from each barrel 
 and fill it up with sea water before selling it. I 
 was told not to sell it to any of the sailors from 
 the ships, but the old man very well knew they 
 would manage to get a taste of it. They put 
 their heads together and cooked up a plan to get 
 all the rum they wanted they would simply 
 make the natives " rush the growler " for them, 
 as they say in the Bowery give their bottles 
 and money to the islanders and let them negotiate 
 the purchase, on the basis of a promised commis 
 sion. I could always tell the bottles the crews 
 sent, for they were particularly large and made of 
 
82 WATERED RUM AT OTAHEITE. 
 
 a peculiar, dark-colored glass. But this was not 
 the only method I had of catching our men at 
 their tricks. For our crew had liberty on shore 
 as long as we lay at anchor. Each day the captain 
 allowed every sailor a dollar, and even more 
 liberty-money went to the officers. I would mark 
 the money I gave them, and the same coin would 
 come back for rum and be ready for distribution 
 again next day. 
 
 After awhile the crews from some of the ships 
 were sick and unfit for duty, and presently our 
 men were in the same fix. The captains thought 
 it was from drinking our rum, and they were 
 right, though they were not yet aware that we 
 had been putting salt water in it. They met and 
 had a consultation, and laid the trouble to our 
 "poor" rum. So they waited on our captain and 
 requested him not to sell their crews any more 
 rum, as they were sure that that was the cause of 
 the sickness. 
 
 The old man replied that he had sold no rum to 
 sailors, and that even if they had got hold of it by 
 trickery, it would not make them drunk, for the 
 salt water in it would act as a soberer. 
 
 There was so much complaint about our ship 
 that finally the missionaries went to confer with 
 the " queen " of the island. Her Koyal Highness 
 
WATERED RUM AT OTAHEITE. 83 
 
 appointed a squad of natives to act as police, to 
 watch and arrest anyone that came ashore with 
 liquor, and to destroy all the rum they could 
 find. The temperance movement was then in its 
 infancy, but there we had legal restriction of the 
 liquor traffic prohibition with a vengeance ! 
 
 But there was an old native called " Jim," the 
 pilot for the harbor, who had been one of my best 
 customers, though he found the salt water affected 
 him somewhat. One day Jim met the old man on 
 shore, and told him he would like to buy a barrel 
 of rum and would pay him his price, six dollars a 
 gallon, for it but only on condition the captain 
 would put no water in it. The old man came on 
 board in the evening, having given the pilot his 
 word of honor not to water the rum. The old man 
 accordingly gave me instructions to fix a barrel of 
 rum, as Jim would come off for it during the 
 night. I was to fill it and make it tight, and 
 when all was ready, to call the men down to help 
 me get it on deck and overboard for Jim to take 
 on shore. I took a lamp, so as to be able to see 
 down there in the hold where the rum was kept, 
 and I had just started when the Captain called to 
 me from his berth, for he was in bed, ordering me 
 to take the light out and put it on the cabin floor. 
 I could not see very well what I was doing, and I 
 
g4 WATERED RUM AT OTAHEITE. 
 
 was so tired that the smell of rum made me all 
 but fall asleep. I lay down there in the dark 
 waiting for the measure to fill, and in a moment 
 more I was in the Land of Nod. The old man, 
 however, was wide awake and wondered why I 
 was so quiet and so amazingly slow. He shouted 
 to me to see what had happened, and that brought 
 me to my senses. The measure was quite full by 
 that time oh, yes ! and nearly a barrel of that 
 villianous grog had run away in the dark. We 
 got the cask on deck and over the side, with a 
 piece of rope attached to it, all ready for Jim to 
 tow on the shore. About midnight Jim came off, 
 about half drunk, with a bag of silver dollars. 
 He was ready to pay a big price, but he was 
 bound to have rum without water in it. We 
 called the old man, and Jim was assured that it 
 was all ready for him to take away. 
 
 But Jim was not to be fooled this way. He 
 wanted to satisfy himself that the rum had not 
 been watered. So we were obliged to hoist it on 
 deck and draw off a glassful. Jim drank part of 
 it, and then asked for a piece of paper, which he 
 first soaked in the rum and then lit from the 
 lamp. The spirits burned brightly, and that con 
 vinced Jim that the bargain was square ; but he 
 failed to observe that the paper itself remained 
 
WATERED RUM AT OTAHEITE. 85 
 
 unburnt, being soaked with water from the rum ; 
 for Jim was all wrong in his notion that the old 
 man was using him right. 
 
 Nevertheless, Jim got the barrel on shore safe 
 and sound, dug a hole in the sand near his hut, 
 and there he buried his prize. But poor Jim 
 had the misfortune to lose the greater part of the 
 stuff, for he went on a roaring drunk that lasted 
 several days, and Her Majesty s coppers kept a 
 bright lookout for the rum. Now, as Jim had 
 regularly dug up the cask once every day to get a 
 new supply of the fiery stimulant, the Imperial 
 Dogberrys soon found it and smashed it, the vile 
 stuff soaking down into the thirsty soil with a 
 rapidity that quite broke old Jim s heart. 
 
 Our ship got a bad, bad name at Otaheite 
 they called the old hooker " The Floating Grog 
 shop," and we well deserved the title. And yet I 
 would have you remember, reader, that I was not 
 in any way responsible for that rum-selling, 
 though every infernal drop was sold at my hands. 
 I was only a cabin-boy, and I had to do what I 
 was told to do, and that was the honorable 
 business the old man set me about. 
 
 Just one other incident of our stay at Otaheite 
 seems to me worth telling. I was not allowed to 
 go ashore with the crew on liberty, as I was the only 
 
86 WATERED RUM AT OTAHEITE. 
 
 one the Captain would trust to have anything to 
 do with selling or dealing out the rum. There was 
 a boy about my age on one of the ships in port, 
 a schoolmate of mine back in New Bedford. He 
 came on board to see me, as he was going ashore 
 on a day s liberty, and I begged the captain to let 
 me go with him. After some teasing the old man 
 consented, telling me to give the keys of the rum- 
 hold to one of the petty officers when I left the 
 ship. Now the second mate was on board and 
 had charge of the ship, while the first mate and 
 watch were ashore on liberty. As I was about to 
 leave the ship, the second mate asked me for the 
 keys. I told him I had obeyed the captain s 
 orders and had given them to another officer. I 
 started ashore, feeling there would be some 
 trouble ; and in this I was not far wrong, for when 
 I came on board that night, I found that there 
 had been a fight for the keys, that the second 
 mate was crazy drunk and wanted to leave the 
 ship, and that the old man had threatened to put 
 him in irons. That need I add ? was my 
 very last holiday on Otaheite. 
 
RIGHT WHALES. 
 
 WE cruised about three months in the Southern 
 Ocean, looking for right whales. We saw many, 
 and took six hundred barrels of oil and about five 
 thousand pounds of bone. 
 
 One day, when the weather was fine and the 
 ocean very calm, we lowered and gave chase 
 to two monstrous right whales that were going 
 slowly to the leeward. The captain s boat came 
 up to them first and succeeded in striking one. 
 Instantly down went both the whales. When 
 they came up again, the mate struck the other 
 one. They proved to be a bull and a cow the 
 cow was struck first. 
 
 The bull made the sea foam. He cut around in 
 great fury and stove two of our boats the cap 
 tain s and the mate s and the lines had to be 
 cut to get clear. The second mate came along 
 lively and picked up the crews, which came near 
 sinking his boat. Eighteen men in one boat, and 
 the ship four miles away to leeward a pleasant 
 prospect ! And as the wind had died down com 
 pletely there was nothing for it but to row, and 
 that in an all but sinking boat, so crowded you 
 could hardly move without knocking your neighbor 
 overboard. 
 
88 RIGHT WHALES. 
 
 But that was not the worst of it. The worst of 
 it fell upon myself and another dare-devil young 
 chap or rather he and I brought it down upon 
 ourselves, for we volunteered. It was this way. 
 The captain was bound not to lose sight of the 
 stoven boats, and wanted two of the men to stay 
 by them until he could bring the old hooker and 
 pick them up. "We two, being young and fearless, 
 offered to take the job. We stood each on the 
 stern and bow of a boat, sunken just to the 
 water s edge, and hung on to a flag-pole for three 
 terrible hours, with the two wounded whales 
 cutting about and making the water white with 
 their huge flukes, only a little way from where 
 we stood. 
 
 All that while we were afraid for our lives, as 
 we were out in the middle of the ocean and the 
 ship was four miles off. 
 
 It is always with a shudder that I recall that 
 adventure, though fifty years and more have gone 
 by since then. But I remember that even when 
 the danger was worst, we found room for joking, 
 and one of our men cried out, " Better have paid 
 your washwoman ! " That is the usual gibe 
 when a man is caught in a stoven boat, for there 
 is a belief among whalers that if you don t pay 
 your washwoman you ll suffer the penalty of 
 getting your boat smashed. 
 
CUTTING HOLE THROUGH SCALP FOR HEAD CHAINS, SHOWING "BONNET 
 
HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 
 
 MAKING our passage to the eastward, when in 
 the longitude of Pitcairn Island the ship was put 
 to the north, and at 8 A. M. on the next day we 
 made the land, appearing more like a sail or ship 
 in the long distance. On nearing we found the 
 island to be nearly 2000 feet high and about five 
 miles in circumference, with a ledge of rocks 
 making off a few rods from the north and south 
 points. When within two miles of the island, 
 five of the natives came off in their canoes, the 
 canoes being dug out of a tree ten or twelve feet 
 long and about two feet wide, with keel from 
 three to four inches broad. 
 
 The natives, before coming on board, very 
 politely asked permission of the captain. They 
 speak very good English when talking to English 
 or Americans, but not intelligible at all to me 
 when talking to each other, owing to their 
 talking so very quickly. At nine in the morning 
 I went on shore, and found it very tiresome in 
 walking up the long, steep hill or cliff. Their 
 houses are built of board, planed, the sides and 
 ends. The sides ship and unship, on account of 
 it being very warm. The roofs are thatched with 
 
90 HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 
 
 the leaves of the trees. We found the people 
 very friendly and hospitable, the young married 
 and single women very diffident. They are tall 
 the most of them and handsomely shaped. 
 Their every-day dress is a loose gown, with no 
 shoes, bonnet or handkerchief. Their children 
 are very pretty and healthy, and are good 
 scholars. The boys at 10 and 11 had gone in the 
 arithmetic as far as the rule of three. The men 
 are well made, tall, with good features, and are 
 very strong. They are very fair and honest in 
 all their dealings. Their principal industry is 
 in cultivating the ground. The island is equally 
 divided among all the people. In trading with 
 ships every family sells an equal share. The 
 women are very strong. I met several coming 
 from the mountain. When down to the village I 
 took the load from some of their backs, and 
 counted five large watermelons as one load. 
 When the boats returned to the ship with the 
 captain, he was accompanied by John Adams, the 
 son of John Adams, one of the survivors of the 
 Bounty, and Christian, the son of Lieutenant 
 Christian, the leader of the mutiny. 
 
 A real romance of the sea is that surrounding 
 Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands. For from the 
 mutineers of the Bounty, an English ship, and 
 
HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 91 
 
 their native wives has grown up a peaceful, 
 God-fearing community in an ocean home on the 
 other side of the globe. 
 
 But few who listen to the Captain s stories 
 know that the Bounty, commanded by Lieutenant 
 Bligh, a Cornishman who had sailed with Captain 
 Cook, was fitted out to carry breadfruit plants 
 from Otaheite, one of the Society Islands, to the 
 West Indies. Certain slave holders with human 
 property in the West Indies had represented to 
 His Majesty George III. that breadfruit would 
 constitute a very cheap and entirely adequate 
 food for their bondsmen in those far away isles. 
 This view the monarch readily adopted, and 
 measures were quickly taken to secure the 
 suggested advantage. 
 
 It was in 1787 the ship sailed away on her 
 adventurous voyage, and a stormy one it proved. 
 The vessel was buffeted by winds and waves, 
 she was badly provisioned, and her captain 
 and officers were severe and cruel. The route 
 marked out by the government was abandoned, 
 and the vessel touched at the Cape of Good Hope, 
 where she was refitted. From there she went to 
 Australia, and after a short stay sailed directly to 
 Otaheite, where she arrived in October. All 
 were well received, and Captain Bligh and his 
 officers were treated like royal visitors. 
 
92 HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 
 
 The Captain who has touched at Otaheite in 
 the Swift describes it as one of the dream gardens 
 of the world. He says it is cradled in the arms 
 of the tender-breathed Pacific, with an atmos 
 phere like etherealized, gentle-vintaged wine, 
 endowed with beauty everywhere present, every 
 where voluptuous, marvellously prolific in dif 
 ferent fruits, wonderfully productive of deep- 
 tinted foliage and brilliantly colored flowers, 
 seemingly a favorite which nature has blessed 
 with her most lavish bounty, decked with her 
 most glowing adornment. 
 
 The natives are a fine looking people, the 
 women being especially attractive, so it is not 
 strange that the sailors of the Bounty thought 
 it a paradise when they landed there years ago. 
 The harsh treatment of Captain Bligh still 
 continued, and it seemed as if it was almost more 
 than the men could bear. Captain Bligh gave 
 the chief many presents, and in return the vessel 
 was loaded with breadfruit trees. For over five 
 months the Bounty lay in this friendly port, but 
 the captain began to suspect his men of treachery 
 and so he sailed away towards the West Indies. 
 
 Twenty-four days after, the mutiny broke out. 
 Captain Bligh on his return to England gave a 
 graphic account of the affair, which, however, is 
 considered somewhat unjust. 
 
HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 93 
 
 The mutiny was led by the mate Christian, an 
 Englishman of good family, and it seems that the 
 idea of the men was to return to the island, where 
 they could live almost without work. No blood 
 was shed, but the captain and a portion of the 
 crew were turned adrift in an open boat, from 
 which they were rescued after a long and perilous 
 voyage, and returned to England. 
 
 It was decided by government that the muti 
 neers must, if possible, be apprehended and fitly 
 punished. The brig Pandora, of twenty-four 
 guns and a hundred and sixty men, under 
 command of Captain Edwards, was dispatched to 
 Otaheite to secure such of the offenders as might 
 be lingering there, and if not all found, to visit 
 the different groups of the Society and Friendly 
 Islands, and places in their vicinity, for the 
 mutineers, who were all to be brought to England 
 in chains. 
 
 On March 23, 1791, the Pandora anchored in 
 Matavi Bay, Otaheite. Fourteen of the muti 
 neers were found, seized, and put in irons on 
 board the vessel. 
 
 They knew nothing of the fate of the Bounty. 
 She had been to the Island and sailed away the 
 previous September, with seven native men and 
 twelve women, leaving these men behind. It 
 
94 HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 
 
 was not until 1814 that their whereabouts were 
 discovered. 
 
 Sir Thomas Staines gives an account of the 
 little colony founded by Christian and his band. 
 
 " On my passage from the Marquesas Islands," 
 he says, " I fell in with an island where none is 
 laid down in the Admiralty or other charts. . . . 
 I hove to until daylight, and then closed to ascer 
 tain if it was inhabited, which I soon discovered 
 it to be, and, to my great astonishment, found 
 that every individual on the island (forty in 
 number ) spoke very good English. They proved 
 to be the descendants of the deluded crew of 
 the Bounty, who, from Otaheite, proceeded to 
 the above-mentioned island, where the ship was 
 burned. 
 
 " Christian appears to have been the leader 
 and sole cause of the mutiny of that ship. A 
 venerable old man, named John Adams, is the 
 only surviving Englishman of those who quitted 
 Otaheite in her, and whose exemplary conduct 
 and fatherly care of the whole of the little colony 
 could not but command admiration. The pious 
 manner in which all those born on the island 
 have been reared, the correct sense of religion 
 which has been instilled into their young minds 
 by this old man, has given him the pre-eminence 
 
HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 95 
 
 over the whole of them, to whom they look up as 
 the father of one and the whole family. 
 
 " A son of Christain was the first born on the 
 island, now about twenty-five years of age, named 
 Thursday October Christian; the elder Christian 
 fell a sacrifice to the jealousy of a Otaheitan man 
 within three or four years after their arrival on 
 the island. ^ 
 
 " The island must undoubtedly be that called 
 Pitcairn, though erroneously laid down in the 
 charts. It produces in abundance yams, plan 
 tains, hogs, goats and fowls; but the coast affords 
 no shelter for a ship of any description, neither 
 could a ship water there without great difficulty. 
 
 " During the whole time they have been on 
 the island only one ship has communicated with 
 them, which took place about six years ago ; and 
 this was the American ship Topaz, of Boston, 
 Matthew Folger, master. 
 
 " The island is completely iron-bound with 
 rocky shores, and the landing in boats must be at 
 all times difficult, although the island may be 
 safely approached within a small distance by a 
 ship." 
 
 Young Christian, a tall, straight limbed, hand 
 some young fellow, with very dark hair and 
 a winsome, open countenance, visited Captain 
 
96 HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 
 
 Staine s ship, his costume consisting of a loin, 
 or " tappa," cloth, and a straw hat ornamented 
 with black cock s feathers. His companion was 
 also a handsome youth, son of George Young, the 
 Bounty s midshipman. When the young men 
 were taken below, and refreshments were set 
 before them, they both arose, and one of them 
 repeated with folded hands, "For what we are 
 going to receive, the Lord make us truly 
 thankful." 
 
 It was found, indeed, that from their English 
 fathers and Otaheitan mothers there had been 
 born a race of beauties; olive-skinned, with 
 lovely dark eyes, perfect teeth, abundant dark 
 hair, and expressions which told of benevolent 
 feelings and warm hearts. 
 
 Many scenes of blood left Adams and Young 
 the only survivors of the fifteen males who had 
 landed on the island, and in her preservation of 
 these two Providence was kind, for they were the 
 two of all the number in whose hearts was the 
 resolution to make this little sea-pent, isloated 
 island a God-fearing and intelligent community. 
 They had a Bible and a prayer-book. Divine 
 services were held each Sunday, and morning and 
 evening prayers were said in all the houses. 
 Young did not long survive his companions, but 
 

HISTOKIC MUTINEERS. 97 
 
 Adams lived to be the instructor, the governor, 
 adviser, and in all essential things the father of 
 the entire people. He had a ring with which he 
 for years married every couple that was united 
 on the island. Great harmony prevailed in the 
 little community. If any difficulty arose it was 
 referred to "Father Adams/ who always and 
 speedily managed to set things right. 
 
 Some time previous to 1825 a whaleship which 
 anchored off the island left on shore a young man 
 who had become so fascinated with the life of the 
 small colony that he wished to remain among its 
 people. In this man the young people found an 
 enthusiastic instructor, and all a close and 
 unselfish friend. His name was John Buffet. 
 
 John Adams died on March 29, 1829, sixty-fire 
 years of age, having lived on Pitcairn Island 
 forty-one years. There had come to the island 
 in 1828 a man named John Hunn Nobbs, who 
 had married Sarah, grand-daughter of Fletcher 
 Christian. Mr. Nobbs having proved an excellent 
 friend and wise counsellor, on him fell the mantle 
 of the expiring " father" of the people. 
 
 When in 1851 Rear- Admiral Fairfax Moresby 
 visited Pitcairn, he took a special interest in Mr. 
 Nobbs and his family, and procured a passage for 
 him to London, where he was ordained a deacon 
 
 7 
 
98 HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 
 
 in August, 1852, and a priest in November. The 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel put him 
 on its list with a salary of fifty pounds a year, 
 and he was introduced to many distinguished 
 people, among them being Queen Victoria, who 
 gave him portraits of herself and the Royal family. 
 
 He returned to Pitcairn in 1853. 
 
 Pitcairn had now become too small for its 
 inhabitants, to which had been added a number of 
 English families, and soon after the return of Mr. 
 Nobbs, Admiral Moresby wrote the Admiralty 
 that measures should be taken for securing a 
 more adequate dwelling place for the people of 
 this " small rock in the West. Government had 
 abandoned Norfolk Island as a convict station, and 
 as this island was regarded as especially desirable 
 for the new home of the Pitcairn colony, over 
 tures, which proved successful, were made for 
 securing it for that purpose. 
 
 Though almost broken-hearted at leaving 
 their beloved Pitcairn, the colonists gratefully 
 acquiesced in the plans made in their behalf, only 
 stipulating that they were to live, as heretofore, 
 in seclusion from the outside world. 
 
 They landed on Norfolk Island in June, 1856. 
 
 There is nothing to relate of the Norfolk 
 Islanders, except the gradual introduction among 
 
HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 99 
 
 them of mercantile life and educational facilities, 
 and the constant broadening and deepening of 
 life in all its forms. The establishment on the 
 Island of a mission college in 1866, was of the 
 greatest importance to the people. 
 
 Being at one time near Savage Island in a calm 
 and entirely smooth sea, a large sperm whale 
 hove in sight, coming towards the ship. After 
 spouting, or breathing, some fifty or sixty times, 
 it turned flukes and went down. The boats were 
 immediately lowered and placed, by direction of 
 the captain, when the whale spouted, having been 
 down nearly one hour. He was nearest the 
 captain s boat, who, with paddle and with little 
 noise, slipped alongside the big fellow. When 
 the boat-steerer threw his harpoons, only one of 
 them entered the whale. He, not liking the 
 sensation, at once sounded, taking out nearly two 
 hundred and fifty fathoms of line. In the mean 
 time, the other boats were pulling for dear life to 
 the assistance of the captain, who was now 
 hauling in the two hundred and fifty fathoms of 
 line. As the chief mate s boat drew near, the 
 whale having broke water and for the time being 
 very quiet, the captain called out that he had but 
 one iron in and for us to be quick and get fast. 
 Now the boat is being rushed square off and on 
 
100 HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 
 
 to the whale, with boat-steerer on his feet, harpoon 
 in hand. Before near enough to dart, the whale 
 settles out of sight, and, in an instant, rising 
 strikes the boat on the port bow with his jaw, 
 knocking all of us overboard except the tub 
 oarsman, who was jammed between the tub, with 
 two hundred and fifty fathoms of line in it, and 
 the side of the boat. When the writer came up, 
 he caught the gunwale, and, raising himself to 
 enter, he found the whale s jaw occupying the 
 length of the boat, on the thwarts or seats. 
 Thinking there was not room for him, he called 
 to the Swede to jump. At this instant the whale 
 rolled with the line so caught in his teeth as to 
 hold the boat right over him. Starting at good 
 speed to run, with boat thumping on his back, 
 until she turned bottom up, and the poor Swede 
 was seen no more. The second mate s boat 
 approaching, it took the mate in, and, while the 
 third mate picked up the men and was saving 
 boat oars, etc., we at once proceeded to help 
 the captain secure the whale. The master was 
 a most excellent whaleman, never darting the 
 lance when he could get near enough to set on 
 the whale, that is, hold on to the pole and push 
 his lance into the vitals of the whale ; and now, 
 while the vicious whale had his eye on our boat, 
 
HISTOKIC MUTINEERS.:-, t \ / .101 
 
 the captain rushed in. In Ian0e,^ahd; out: of frfre 
 spout hole with his breath came the thick buckets 
 or barrels of blood, when the victory was won. 
 The whale was taken to the ship, cut in, and 
 boiled out over eighty barrels of sperm oil. 
 
RUDDER SIMPSON, MYSELF 
 AND THE PERSONAGE. 
 
 ** Strangers in strange places should always be strangers." 
 
 Ruth Ashmore. 
 
 " TAINT much like a New Bedford Sunday, eh 
 boy?" 
 
 " Not by a long sea mile! " 
 
 " Church in the morning Holy Joe in his 
 heavenly togs. Bull-fight in the afternoon 
 Holy Joe on deck with blood in his for ard lights, 
 b gawsh ! Granny Howland ! what a crew these 
 here heathen Chilenos be ! Eh, boy ? " 
 
 " Pious, though." 
 
 "Eh?" 
 
 " Pious, Rudder, pious as a saint in a stained- 
 glass window. I was on shore yesterday ; and 
 Rudder, you ought toVe seen the turn-out. Beats 
 man-o -war s men at quarters. Pretty as a New 
 Bedford Fourth-o -July. Long strings o priests 
 and such ; big crew o sogers ; band o music ; 
 flags and candles; and all the dagoes in Talca- 
 huano turned loose and shouting Spanish so I 
 thought they d bust an oar sure ! I gave 
 
SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 103 
 
 chase, o course, and they made off to windward 
 and brought up in some kind o big square." 
 
 "Plaza," said Kudder. "That s what these 
 here heathen Chilienos calls it." 
 
 " Yes," I went on, " that s the word. Funny 
 lingo they talk here. And, Rudder, that whole 
 turn-out was brought up all standing by an order 
 from the colonel, or general, or whatever they 
 call their f old man/ and then they got out a 
 dummy of Judas Iscariot." 
 
 "Effigy," laughed Rudder, "That s the word 
 you re soundin for." 
 
 " Well, effigy then. That whole ship s company 
 fell in line again, and peppered that effigy with 
 cold lead. Then they set the old moss-back afire, 
 beginning with his boots, and when the fire crept 
 up amidships he blew himself to bits, like a bomb 
 lance, and all the people yelled and jumped and 
 crowed. Don t you call that pious, Rudder ? 
 
 " Well, t ain t my notion of piosity. Piosity, 
 boy, is to keep out o jail, keep out o bull-fights, 
 and steer clear o them dev lish pulparees. That s 
 what / call piosity. An them pulparees I tell 
 you, boy them pulparees is the sartin road to 
 Granny Howlan s wash tub. Why, there s one 
 now, boy." (A moment of hesitation, a wriggle 
 of futile resistance.) "Say we go in?" 
 
104 SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 
 
 I laughed outright. So did Rudder, and in 
 we went. 
 
 A pulparee is by interpretation a grog-shop. 
 Pulparia is the Spanish, but we mariners give 
 it a turn of our own. Dark and grimy is the 
 pulparee; desperate and dangerous are the idlers 
 that lounge there ; vile and strong is the fiery 
 liquor they drink. 
 
 I stepped across the well-worn threshold with a 
 stinging sense of guilt. I had never entered such 
 a place before. I was a thorough-going teeto 
 taller. And besides I began to wonder how ever 
 should I manage to comport myself becomingly in 
 the fellowship of these hard and reckless chole 
 drinkers. I was sorry, now, that I had let Rudder 
 Simpson take me in tow. 
 
 My embarrassment, however, was soon relieved, 
 for a superb native, gorgeous in many dazzling 
 colors, stepped up to Simpson and engaged him 
 in conversation. 
 
 " Bowling-alley o," said the glittering stranger, 
 " Senor lika play nine-pinza ? " 
 
 " You re right/* said Rudder, flattered with the 
 attention, " Where away ? " 
 
 " Come," said the dazzling personage, with a 
 stagy gesture. He lookei as if he had just 
 stepped out of " Carmen." 
 
SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 105 
 
 The Personage led the way into the street, and 
 we followed. We passed on together along a 
 thoroughfare crowded with Chilian merrymakers. 
 Here an organ grinder had gathered a motley 
 crowd of listeners. Yonder a man and a woman, 
 bothpeones, were dancing the zamacueca. Leisure 
 ly throngs strolled by on their way to the 
 bull-fight. Now and then a pretty senorita 
 peered out at us through a grated window 
 piercing some stout adobe wall. 
 
 Spanish was spoken on every hand. Kudder 
 and I enjoyed the novelty of the situation. It 
 was a great thing to have a notable personage to 
 serve as guide and guardian, as we roamed through 
 that old, white-walled, red- tiled Chilian town. 
 
 We came at last to a sort of cheap inn, or 
 posada, entering which, we crossed the enclosed 
 patio and found ourselves in the bowling alley. 
 
 Here the Personage bargained with the sallow, 
 round-shouldered, little proprietor, and explained 
 to Rudder the terms of the agreement. It was 
 simplicity itself. The loser of the game was to 
 pay for the use of the alley. 
 
 Then the game began. The Personage threw off 
 his emerald-hued poncho and gave it to me to hold. 
 
 With a magnificent wave of his patrician hand, 
 he said to me, " You, senor, pick up ze nine-pinza!" 
 
106 SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 
 
 Rudder could not have made me do it. I 
 should have fought to the last eyelash. But for 
 the personage why, certainly, with pleasure ! 
 
 It was a great treat to watch those two men 
 play. What a curious contrast ! The Personage 
 would take his cigarrito between the fingers of his 
 left hand, poise the wooden ball in the palm of his 
 right hand, strike a startling, statuesque attitude, 
 and then, with a sudden spring that sent the long 
 red sash swinging against his yellow breeches, and 
 brought the huge silver spurs of his tall boots 
 banging against the floor, he would hurl the ball 
 down the alley. Then he would pose like Hamlet 
 when he says, " To be or not to be," and wait to 
 see the result. 
 
 Rudder, on the other hand, rolled into range 
 with a slovenly waddle and discharged his missile 
 without further ado. Whish-sh-sh-sht, bumpety- 
 bump-bump-bump, whir-r-r-r , crash ! Down would 
 go the nine-pins never less than six gener 
 ally all nine ! But with the Personage it was 
 not so. Had he been drinking augadente who 
 knows ? 
 
 I picked up nine-pins for fully an hour. 
 From time to time I saw a pained look in the 
 Personage s proud face, for the Personage was 
 playing a losing game. 
 
SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 107 
 
 When the hour was done, Rudder said, " Now 
 colonel, you settle with the Czar ! " 
 
 " / how you say a? / paya ze gamo? No, 
 senor, no ! You win, you paya ! I lose ze gamo. 
 You lose ze oro how you say a ? ze monee ! " 
 
 "No, ye don t," cried Rudder. " Blowed if 
 ye do ! " 
 
 " Si, senor. How you say ? yes, sirra ! " 
 
 " Blast ye ? " bawled Rudder. Pay down that 
 cash or I ll make old rags out o yer rainbow togs. 
 Blowed if I don t ! Hear that, Dago ? " 
 
 Now, as a matter of solemn fact, the Personage 
 had not so much as a piastre in his wallet. He 
 had already spent his last copper for augadente in 
 the pulparee. 
 
 Rudder was not uncommonly quick of percep 
 tion. It was a moment before he fully grasped 
 the enormity of the outrage the Personage had 
 perpetrated upon him. When he saw through 
 the scheme, he boiled with wrath. Before he 
 had time to lay into the Personage, the round- 
 shouldered proprietor stuck his sallow visage 
 through the door of his lair, and seeing what was 
 up, made haste to insure himself against fraud. 
 
 He expostulated fiercely with Rudder and 
 the Personage, demanding four times the usual 
 fee. 
 
108 SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 
 
 " Say, old boss," said Rudder, " this sunset 
 dandy here won t pay down the cash ; an if he 
 don t, I ll shiver his blarsted timbers, b gawsh ! 
 Hear that, ye blasted Dago f " 
 
 The Personage puffed his cigar rito in silence. 
 
 Rudder gazed at his enemy a second in unutter 
 able malice. Then he swung his huge palm in 
 air and brought it across the face of the Per 
 sonage with a slam that knocked that worthy s 
 cigarritto clean into his mouth, light and all ! 
 
 Now, I flatter myself that my wits work quicker 
 than Rudder Simpson s. In an instant I got three 
 different views of the situation. First, this was 
 a den of robbers and the Personage was a decoy 
 to lead us into peril, the provocation being raised 
 by him to induce us to begin the fight and take 
 the consequence if ever the case got into court. 
 Second, this was a first-class hotel, but full of the 
 friends of the Personage, who would be willing to 
 take his part in a quarrel. Third, the hotel was 
 well-nigh deserted because of the bull-fight, and 
 therefore there would be few witnesses of what 
 might presently occur. In any contingency, the 
 scene of the battle must be immediately trans 
 ferred to the open street. 
 
 To this end I grabbed the Chileno s green 
 poncho, slapped him on the head with it, to 
 
SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 109 
 
 attract his attention, and then turned and ran 
 like a gallied whale. 
 
 The Personage dashed after me, Rudder 
 Simpson dashed after the Personage, and the 
 round-shouldered alley-owner dashed after Rudder 
 Simpson. I led my excited followers a swift chase 
 across the patio, plunged headlong through the 
 posado and brought up in the street. Once there 
 I dropped the poncho, and just as I did so, the 
 agile Simpson landed a merciless right-swing on 
 the Chileno s starboard ear. 
 
 Neither the stoop-shouldered proprietor nor the 
 eighteen-year-old cabin-boy cared to get mixed up 
 in the row, so we two stood well back from the 
 mill. We were not alone, however, for the battle 
 was no more than joined when up came a dozen 
 sailors from various ships in the harbor. 
 
 " I sy," bawled a ruddy Cockney, " ere s a 
 bloody row the syme as a bloody bull-fight! 
 Wat s on?" 
 
 " It im, Yank, it im bloomin ard ! " 
 
 "Avast ! " cried a Nantucket whaleman. "His 
 chimney s afire ! He s spoutin blood ! It s his 
 flurry ! " 
 
 "No, taint; he s only a little groggy. There, 
 my hearties, bring the claret give away, 
 boys!" 
 
110 SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 
 
 " That s right, Jack, you re a good un, eart 
 an and ! " 
 
 " Watch im, watch im ! There, good un ! " 
 
 By this time the Personage had lost his silk 
 sash, his shirt was torn open from shoulder to belt, 
 and his hairless head was, as Dr. Doyle would say, 
 a study in scarlet. Eudder, on the other hand, 
 was still in prime condition. He was badly out of 
 wind and he had a lump under his left eye like a 
 pigeon s egg, but there was unlimited fight in that 
 huge, lanky frame of his. He made a furious lead 
 at his foe. The two men grappled and clinched. 
 The Spaniard was forced to the wall. 
 
 " Owe it to him, Yank ! " 
 
 " Look sharp, Yank ; e ll spur." 
 
 And spur he did. That was what he had been 
 waiting for. He jabbed the sharp steel rowel 
 deep into the calf of Rudder Simpson s leg and 
 ground it to and fro in the wound. 
 
 " Down killick ! " 
 
 " Kill the Dago ! " 
 
 In Rudder s effort to escape the spur he had 
 lost his balance, and the two desperate men fell 
 to the earth together. 
 
 " Bully for you ! " 
 
 " Kill im, Yank ! " 
 
 " Don t get gallied ! " 
 
SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. Ill 
 
 But best he could do, Eudder was forced under. 
 
 Then I heard a half-smothered cry : " Help 
 quick more beef!" The Spaniard was biting 
 Rudder Simpson s nose ! ! 
 
 I sprang to the rescue. As I did so, a dozen 
 Chilenos came up out of the ground. A dozen 
 more dropped down from the sky. I battered the 
 Spaniard with both fists till I thought I had killed 
 him, and then 
 
 Two seconds later it was several hours after 
 ward. 
 
 I opened my eyes or rather, my eye, for one 
 of them somehow stayed shut and observed 
 important changes in my surroundings. Four 
 walls had closed around me. A low couch had 
 worked its way in under my back. A heavy- 
 raftered roof unaccountably met my gaze. In 
 other words, I had been carried into a house and 
 rescued from the blood-thirsty Chilenos. 
 
 It was night. 
 
 I took in the situation only by degrees. A dark- 
 eyed woman was sitting at the foot of the couch. 
 She was brightly clad, and she had a brilliant 
 shawl thrown over her shoulders. Her hair hung 
 in two heavy, dark braids. The woman gazed 
 across the room. Her attention was fixed upon 
 someone speaking. That someone knelt before 
 
112 SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 
 
 an image of the blessed Virgin, and was praying 
 aloud to the holy Mother of God ? 
 
 I had never heard such pathos in a woman s 
 voice. It was the agony of unanswered prayer. 
 
 It was a sweet voice. The woman was very 
 young. 
 
 I could not understand what she said, but I 
 know she was entreating the Maid of Galilee to 
 spare my life. I could not bear to see the woman 
 so sad ; so I moved gently on the couch. 
 
 " Oh, Inez ! " cried the mother. 
 
 The girl sprang from her knees. The two 
 women embraced each other and bent over me. 
 Their brown eyes shown with exultant joy ; their 
 hair brushed my face. 
 
 I felt like a person suddenly required to make 
 a speech. I had been saved saved from the 
 fury of a blood-thirsty mob ; these women had 
 saved me I owed my life to them ! Oh, how 
 could I thank them enough ? I tried to frame 
 some sort of expression for my gratitude; but 
 then it occurred to me that I had a capital 
 excuse for saying absolutely nothing at all. I 
 knew not a single word of Spanish. 
 
 What an agreeable relief ! 
 
 But had I attempted even the feeblest sentence, 
 it would inevitably have been interrupted, for just 
 
JUNK COMING IN AT WAISTV 
 
SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 113 
 
 then there was a deafening uproar in the street. 
 I could hear loud cries. The words were Spanish. 
 I could nevertheless understand one word, Ameri 
 cano, and I realized that I was the person so 
 earnestly held in request. 
 
 Inez rushed to the windows to make sure that 
 the shutters were securely barred. As she did so, 
 she left a pretty picture in my memory her 
 white arms outstretched, her head thrown back, 
 her hair luxuriant and beautiful. She was my 
 guardian angel. 
 
 I lifted my head to watch her, but the effort 
 made me dizzy, and I swooned again. 
 
 I think it must have been only a few minutes 
 before I was myself once more, but when I next 
 realized the possible gravity of the situation, the 
 mob had gone and we were for the moment safe. 
 Inez sat by my side, stroking my hand and look 
 ing distractingly lovely. I noticed the pungent 
 odor of some foreign drug. On the table was an 
 open flask. 
 
 But now there came a fresh assault upon the 
 street door. Again I heard cries. 
 
 Chilenos ? No, the rabble had gone their way. 
 Vigilantes ? No, those mounted night patrolmen 
 were apparently quite indifferent to the fact of 
 my existence. The voices were familiar voices, 
 and the words were English. 
 
114 SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 
 
 " Hi there, boy ! You in there, you rascal ? 
 Come, turn to ! None o your sogering ! Do 
 you hear the news ? Tumble up, lively / " It 
 was the old man ! 
 
 I shouted back, " Spanish folks in here. Don t 
 known English. Can t tell em to open the 
 door ! " 
 
 " Open it yourself, then, you leatherhead ! " 
 That was unmistakably the mate s voice. 
 
 Now my preservers, hearing English spoken 
 and realizing that the men on the doorstep must 
 be acquaintances of mine, or at all events no 
 enemies, else I should have been afraid to answer, 
 opened the door. 
 
 In strode the two burly men. The captain 
 never looked so big, the mate was never so surly. 
 
 "Well," the old man observed in a tone of 
 infinite disgust, " here you are with your head 
 broke ! " 
 
 My head was not exactly " broke," though it 
 was by no means attractively embellished by my 
 recent battle with the Personage. I had a gash 
 about an inch long over my left eye, and that 
 luckless optic was completely closed by the black 
 ened swelling. 
 
 The old man roared at me with such thunderous 
 ferocity that Inez was frightened. She seemed to 
 
SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 115 
 
 think my destruction was now a matter of grim 
 certainty. She threw herself upon her knees 
 between the old man and his prey. Her mother 
 at the same time seized the mate by the collar. 
 It was like a scene in a melodrama! 
 
 I found the gust of cool night air from the open 
 door very refreshing. There was a certain ener 
 gizing property also in the old man s harsh voice. 
 I rose from the couch. I felt so much better that 
 I thought I could walk alone. I tried yes, I could. 
 
 My first impulse was to kiss Inez (the dear 
 girl!); but it occurred to me she would hardly like 
 to be kissed by a chap with a broken head and a 
 game eye. I found it somewhat easier to refrain 
 from kissing her mother. I had not the slightest 
 temptation to kiss the old man. 
 
 As it was, I bowed, and waved my hand in a 
 futile sort of pantomime, and wished with all my 
 heart I could put my farewell into words, for then 
 I should have made Inez promise to write often. 
 I was pitiably conscious of figuring in an awkward 
 and inglorious attempt at sentiment. It was as 
 absurd as that place in Fanny Burney s novel 
 where it says, " They both wept, curtseyed and 
 withdrew." 
 
 Very little was said about the affair, however, 
 as we three Americanos returned to the Swift. 
 
116 SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 
 
 Of course I was wriggling with curiosity to know 
 what in creation had become of Rudder Simpson 
 and the Personage. I wanted to know, too, what 
 had been the result of the fight and the subse 
 quent riot. I suppose it was part of the old 
 man s vengeful design to keep me in ignorance 
 of the facts. 
 
 Next day, as I rose from my bunk, I was seized 
 with a sudden fit of dizziness from loss of blood, 
 the old man said and in consequence I was 
 ordered to remain in bed all day. 
 
 I have always supposed that that was done in 
 malice. The old man babied me there in port as 
 you never saw him baby me at sea. 
 
 I spent that day imagining all possible and 
 impossible outcomes of the affray. I sent Rudder 
 to jail, had him tried for bloody murder and shot 
 like a dog. I visited a similiar fate upon the Per 
 sonage. I even congratulated myself that it had 
 not been my own lot to leave my bones in the 
 Potter s Field at Talcahuano. Over and over I 
 turned the story till it became a sort of waking 
 nightmare, growing constantly more and more 
 hideous. I have heard of the fashionable woman 
 who said she couldn t go to Europe because she was 
 reading seventeen serial stories. My own interest 
 in this Chileno romance was hardly less keen. 
 
SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 117 
 
 The day passed uneventfully, but late that 
 evening a shout went ringing through the ship, 
 calling all hands. All hands ! And in port ! 
 what possible emergency could occasion such an 
 appeal to force as that ? 
 
 I leaped from my bunk, grabbed hastily for 
 boots and trousers, pulled them on in a jiffy, and 
 dashed up the cabin stairs. It was bright as day 
 only it was a horrible, yellow-red light. All was 
 confusion on deck. Orders were given in quick 
 succession. All hands were needed to save the 
 ship. I sprang up the ratlines with the rest. I 
 heard a voice say, " She s the Ganges, shipmates, 
 the Ganges, poor barky ! " He was right. Off 
 to windward lay the handsome, well-found, full- 
 rigged ship Ganges of Fall Kiver, swathed in a 
 shroud of flames. 
 
 In my excitement I obeyed orders automati 
 cally, not stopping to consider the meaning of 
 the words I acted upon. Somehow I had got 
 the hollow of my feet set upon the foot-rope and 
 my arms flung over the particular yard assigned 
 me as my post of honor. I could see the Ganges 
 ablaze from stem to waist. A man at my right 
 was doing precisely what I was doing, waiting for 
 a bucket to be passed to him. The man had a 
 white nose. It was covered with sticking plaster. 
 
118 SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 
 
 " Why, Rudder," I exclaimed, "I didn t know 
 you were alive ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes," said the imperturbable Simpson. 
 " Nose in a sling, but still seaworthy. Rigged up 
 jury-nose see ? " 
 
 The fire burst through the Ganges main-hatch, 
 sending up a fountain of rushing, soaring, spread 
 ing, fluttering red sparks. They scattered out 
 over the sky. They fell in hot showers upon a 
 score of anchored ships. Every endangered ves 
 sel had men aloft. 
 
 Buckets were passed from tarry hand to tarry 
 hand. We drenched the masts and yards and 
 sails and rigging. 
 
 " Why in the name o sea-sense, don t somebody 
 scuttle the old hooker ?" 
 
 Praia to." 
 
 " Don t wonder ; no fun to go below in a blazin 
 butter-box resky, blamed resky. But why in 
 
 blazes don t Oh, look, boy, look ! clap yer 
 
 for ard lights on that they done it a ready ! " 
 
 So they had. The old ballahoo settled away, 
 like a spaded shark, and went hissing to the 
 bottom, only her blazing masts still stuck out of 
 the water. 
 
 " Good," said Rudder, " bully for every man 
 Jack of em ! " 
 
119 
 
 Those various men Jacks were at that time 
 afloat in their whale-boats, and now they made for 
 a ship near by. The light had nearly faded away, 
 but we could still see them. In fact, we could 
 see the whole Bay of Conception, and the " long, 
 black land " six miles away across the harbor. 
 
 "Well," said Rudder, " s pose the old man ll 
 keep us a-soakin ? this here riggin a good haour 
 more, blast im ! " 
 
 "Then, Rudder," said I, "tell me how that 
 fight came out. I don t know a thing that hap 
 pened after I was hit." 
 
 " Well," said Rudder, " tain t no great twister. 
 Chilenos an mobs an Dago police, an the steward 
 o that there Ganges, that s jest naow a-bunkin 
 in Granny s wash-tub there, stuck in his blazin 
 innards an took to the haw-spittle, an not a 
 blamed stitch o liberty for them sweet, lob-lolly 
 boys sence ! Them s the facts, boy." 
 
 "And what do you think now of that big 
 Chileno Personage duke, baron, earl some 
 such nabob ? " 
 
 "Not by a jugfull ! That there rainbow dandy, 
 so says Slush Dooley (an he s knocked araoun 
 Talky-wanno nigh onto a twelve-month), that 
 there rainbow dandy, says he, why, he s just a 
 darned old farmer. Them togs is what they wear 
 
120 SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 
 
 up-country. Blow all their cash on their jeans ! 
 An I tell you, boy, they ain t no true piosity in 
 splicin elbows with Dago strangers not of a 
 Sunday, no, sir not if the court knows herself, 
 an (feeling of his plastered nose, and glancing 
 mournfully at my bandaged head and blackened 
 eye) she thinks she do ! " 
 
 We finally bade adieu to the beautiful islands 
 of the South Pacific ocean, and began our home 
 ward voyage. We had a fair passage to the Cape, 
 but as we neared that point of storms and gales, 
 the days grew shorter and the weather more 
 boisterous. When we ran to the eastward, we 
 encountered heavy gales, with a tremendous sea 
 running. Although the gales were a fair wind 
 for us, the old man did not run nights, as the ship 
 was deeply laden with oil, and he was afraid of 
 losing our boats or having our decks swept by the 
 sea washing over us. We hove to several nights, 
 and on one of these nights we lost a man over 
 board. Thanks to the tireless exertions of the 
 crew, he was saved from a watery grave. He 
 had been sent aloft to loose the fore-top-sail 
 during the night and was stepping from the top 
 sail yard to the rigging, when the ship fetched a 
 heavy roll to the windward. He missed his hold 
 and fell into the sea ; but as he was to windward, 
 
HOISTING ON LOWEK JAW. 
 
SIMPSON, MYSELF AND THE PERSONAGE. 121 
 
 the sea washed him up to the side of the vessel, 
 The night was very clear and the moon was full, 
 so we could see the huge waves wash him up the 
 ship s side and the receding wave, or undertow, 
 take him away - sometimes fifty feet away. It 
 would have been folly to attempt to lower a boat 
 at that time. There was, however, only one other 
 thing to do, and that we did. The men tied ropes 
 around their bodies and hung over the side to 
 grasp him if possible. After a while a sailor 
 caught him by his foot, but his boot came off and 
 we were almost ready to give him up as lost. Yet 
 in a short time he was seen again, and was thrown 
 to the side. Jus\, at that moment one of our men 
 seized him by the arm, and with help got him on 
 board. The poo: fellow was nearly done for, 
 but by rubbing him, and wrapping him in warm 
 blankets, and giving him hot drinks, we saved 
 him. I have hinted at this story before. This 
 was the man Townsend who tried to desert us at 
 the Navigator Islands. 
 
WHALE-LAND AND ITS 
 CUSTOMS. 
 
 THERE are many kinds of whales, and as much 
 aristocracy among them as in European society. 
 The king among them, and, indeed, of all the 
 sea s inhabitants, is the Greenland, or right whale. 
 This sovereign is sometimes seen on the coast of 
 Britain, and occasionally in even more southern 
 latitudes, but its favorite and most occupied 
 quarters are the northern seas, chiefly in the 
 Arctic regions. 
 
 Of its grotesque and unsymmetrical body ; 
 which is often from sixtv to seventy feet long, 
 the head occupies from H third to a fourth of 
 the entire length, the right side of the skull being 
 larger than the left. It has two small fins, or 
 flippers, but its progress is made by means of 
 the tail, which is five or six feet long and 
 twenty feet wide. The dirty looking, almost 
 entirely black, skin is naked with the exception 
 of a few bristles about the jaws, its surface 
 being moistened by an oily fluid. The lower 
 surface of the true skin extends into a thick 
 layer of blubber or fac, which is from a foot 
 to two feet in thickness This blubber fortifies 
 
WHALE-LAND AND ITS CUSTOMS. 123 
 
 the animal against cold, and, by rendering the 
 body much lighter, helps to resist the pressure 
 of the water in great depths. The eyes, about 
 the size of those of an ox, are situated on the 
 side of the head, and have very acute sight. 
 The spout-holes of the right whale are from 
 eight to twelve inches long and comparatively 
 narrow, and are situated on the most elevated 
 part of the head. The powerful tail can shiver 
 with one blow a large boat to splinters, or toss 
 it and its crew a long distance into the air. 
 The plates of baleen, or whalebone, suspended 
 from the roof of the mouth number three to 
 four hundred on each side. The base of each 
 plate is embedded in the membrane that covers 
 the palate, the edge forming a loose fringe com 
 posed of pliant bristles. 
 
 The Rorqual is of the same family as the 
 Greenland whale, but a sort of poor relation, 
 as it is despised and rejected by whalers unless 
 it is the only prey they can seize upon. He 
 is larger than the Greenland whale, sometimes 
 measuring a hundred feet, and is a sort of slaty 
 gray and whitish beneath. Like his haughty 
 relatives he is found for the most part in Arctic 
 seas. He feeds on large prey, his throat being 
 much more capacious than that of the right whale. 
 
124 WHALE-LAND AND ITS CUSTOMS. 
 
 If the Greenland whale is king of the deep, 
 the sperm whale is prince. This whale is black, 
 and is found in nearly all seas, but most 
 frequently in southern hemspheres. What sailors 
 call the "bull whale," an ancient male, has a 
 large gray spot on the front of the head. The 
 throat is large enough to admit the body of a 
 man. The mouth has no baleen. The upper 
 jaw is without teeth; the lower jaw having 
 twenty-five or thirty on either side, according 
 to the age of the animal, which are conical and 
 slightly recurved, deeply embedded in the gum, 
 from which they reach for about two inches. 
 The lower jaw is extremely narrow, the teeth 
 fitting into cavities in the upper jaw. These 
 teeth weigh from one to three pounds each. 
 This whale has a single spout or blow-hole 
 situated near the front of the head. The 
 enormous head of the sperm whale is mostly 
 occupied by a cavity in front of and above the 
 skull, called by whalers " the case," which some 
 times holds as many as fifteen barrels of 
 spermaceti. This substance hardens on cooling. 
 The oil with which it is mixed in the case is 
 separated from it by drawing and squeezing, and 
 the yellow unctuous spermaceti becomes the 
 beautiful, pearly-white, flaky substance of crys- 
 
WHALE-LAND AND ITS CUSTOMS. 125 
 
 taline purity which we know. This oil gives to 
 the fore part of the whale s body a lightness 
 which enables the animal to float and rest. 
 
 The "junk," a thick, elastic mass which 
 occupies the head under the case, also yields a 
 considerable quantity of sperm oil. The sub 
 stance called ambergris, which is used in the 
 most expensive perfumery, and in some Catholic 
 and Mohammedan churches as incense, is found 
 in the intestines of diseased sperm whales, and is 
 supposed to be generated by indigestion. It is 
 extremely rare, and often commands the astound 
 ing price of three hundred dollars a pound. 
 
 There are many other kinds of whales, but they 
 are for the most part imperfectly classified, and 
 of little interest save to naturalists. 
 
 The tongue of a right whale is a soft, thick 
 mass, and has been known to yield twenty-five 
 barrels of oil. Whale flesh is firm, coarse, and 
 red in color. 
 
 It has been calculated from the transverse lines 
 on the plates of baleen, each line being supposed 
 to denote an annual check of growth, that whales 
 attain to the age of eight or nine hundred years, 
 but it is by no means certain that this assumption 
 is well grounded. 
 
 The infant whale is from eight to twelve feet 
 long, and can swim the moment it is born. The 
 
126 WHALE-LAND AND ITS CUSTOMS. 
 
 mother shows every mark of fondness for her 
 offspring, and the little one, in itself of slight 
 value, is sometimes harpooned and drawn along 
 side a boat that the mother may be induced to 
 follow. Suckling is done at the surface, mother 
 and baby rolling from side to side that each 
 may breathe in turn. 
 
 There is no essential difference in the manner 
 in which the most highly civilized people and 
 the rudest tribes prosecute whale fishery. Both 
 approach the animal in boats, and attack it by 
 harpoons to which lines are affixed, following up 
 and repeating the attack until the strength of 
 the whale is exhausted and it is obliged to 
 succumb. 
 
 The most simple harpoon used in whale fishery 
 is a spear about three feet long, with a flattened 
 point, which has sharp edges and two large 
 flattened barbs. These harpoons are attached 
 to long lines. 
 
 Many improvements have been made in whale 
 fishery tools. As much depends upon the blade- 
 like edges of the harpoon s barbs as their power 
 to hold when in. Many ingenious devices of 
 movable barbs have been contrived which close 
 on the shaft of the instrument when entering the 
 animal s side, and open outward as soon as there 
 
WHALE-LAND AND ITS CUSTOMS. 127 
 
 is any strain on the shaft. Another modern 
 device is the gun harpoon, a short bar of iron 
 with a barb at the end, and a ring with a 
 chain for attachment to the line. This is fired 
 from a gun in the hands of the officer. A very 
 effective expedient was suggested by the eminent 
 toxicologist, Sir K. Christison, of Edinburgh 
 University. By this device glass tubes con 
 taining prussic acid are so placed in the shafts 
 of the harpoon that the instant the line is pulled 
 tight they are broken, the poison occasioning 
 instant death. Another mode of employing 
 prussic acid is to enclose a glass tube containing 
 it in a hollow bullet about four inches long, 
 which is fired from a rifle made for the purpose, 
 the bullet also containing an explosive connected 
 with a fuse which is kindled as the rifle is fired, 
 so that the bullet bursts immediately after 
 entering the body of the whale, and spreads its 
 deadly contents through the flesh. Strychnia is 
 sometimes used instead of prussic acid with 
 similar results. A whale killed by these methods 
 only disappears for about five minutes, then 
 comes to the surface and instantly dies. But 
 rapid and effective as are these last-named 
 methods, their use is strongly disliked by whalers, 
 who have an unconquerable aversion to handling 
 
128 WHALE-LAND AND ITS CUSTOMS. 
 
 the carcass of an animal which has been killed 
 by such deadly poisons, and they a^e now wholly 
 discontinued. 
 
 Whaling is a very ancient industry, as in the 
 ninth century the Norwegians sent their quaintly- 
 fashioned boats to Greenland in search of them. 
 
 Other early maritime nations showed great 
 spirit in whale fishery, but so vigorously did the 
 Dutch pursue the industry, that in the latter 
 part of the seventeenth century they furnished 
 nearly all Europe with oil. 
 
 The New England colonies entered upon the 
 enterprise at a very early date ; at first by 
 simply going out in boats on their own shores. 
 When in the eighteenth century these shores 
 had become deserted by whales, ships were fitted 
 out for the northern seas, New Bedford becoming 
 the most important whaling port ID the world. 
 
 But this industry suffered during the Revolu 
 tion, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the 
 disasters of the sea, for thirty-four vessels from 
 New Bedford were wrecked at one time in the 
 north Pacific. But it was ruined at last by the 
 substitution of petroleum for whale oil. The 
 ship owners had to look for other ways of using 
 their great vessels. One of these was quite 
 unique. In the war of 1861, the United States 
 
MINCING THE "BLUBBER". 
 
WHALE-LAND AND ITS CUSTOMS. 129 
 
 Government, wishing to block the ports of 
 Savannah and Charleston and several less impor 
 tant entries to southern harbors, decided upon 
 the novel plan of sinking a large number of 
 abandoned, stone-laden vessels in these ports. 
 The whaler, because of its peculiar model, was 
 especially adapted to this purpose, and twenty- 
 four of the forty-five crafts which formed the 
 Stone Fleet were bought and refitted at New 
 Bedford. Fifty cents a ton was offered for 
 stone, and many a wall was torn down, and many 
 a cobblestone heap and roadside accumulation 
 levelled to furnish forth the necessary weightings. 
 
 The whalers were from three hundred to four 
 hundred tons burthen, and were always built of 
 the best material. A fair price for such a ship 
 was about $22,000, and her three years outfit 
 cost about $20.000 more. Besides all the neces 
 sary provisions for officers and men, there were 
 added casks for the oil, spare sails, cordage, 
 and boats. 
 
 Such a vessel carried about thirty-two men. 
 
 America is at present more actively engaged 
 in whale fishery than any other country, San 
 Francisco being one of its most important ports. 
 The whale is now sought almost exclusively for 
 the bone, for which no adequate substitute has 
 
130 WHALE-LAND AND ITS CUSTOMS. 
 
 been discovered, and which, owing to its growing 
 scarcity, commands from three to six dollars a 
 pound. 
 
THE FROZEN NORTH. 
 
 BUT the Captain s stories were not always of 
 the sunny South, with its islands covered with 
 graceful palms and luxuriant verdure, and teem 
 ing with life. One tale was of the terrible frozen 
 North, which to know is almost like death, so 
 fearful is its breath, and so fatal the clutch of 
 its awful fingers. 
 
 For there the sailors see ice everywhere, 
 clinging to the spars, and jamming with tremendous 
 solidity about the sides of the vessels, holding 
 them with the grip of death in this land of 
 desolation. 
 
 The ships of which the Captain told this story 
 were so staunch and goodly and gracefully named 
 withal. Out from the Golden Gate, from New 
 London s harbor, from the wharf at New Bedford, 
 from the port of Boston, and the shores of far 
 Hawaii had sailed the Onward, the Florence, the 
 Clara Bell, the Acors Barnes, the Josephine, the 
 Camilla, the St. George, the Mount Wollaston, 
 the Cornelius Howland, the James Allen, the 
 Java, the Rainbow, the Arctic, the Desmond, 
 and the Three Brothers. Whalers all, ten from 
 New Bedford, manned by stalwart, brave-hearted 
 
132 THE FROZEN NORTH. 
 
 fellows, eager for adventure, ripe for risks, 
 alert and hardy, not all speaking one language, 
 but all stimulated by the one hope of a pros 
 perous voyage, and rich remuneration as its 
 results. 
 
 It was in 1876, after a successful cruise of 
 seven months, the Arctic was crushed in the ice 
 July 7th, off Sea Horse Island, eighteen miles 
 from the Bend, her crew being distributed among 
 the other vessels. On August 1st the fleet reached 
 Point Barrows, where it became completely 
 hemmed in by ice. The Florence saved herself 
 by managing to keep in the rear of a grounded 
 iceberg, and the Rainbow and Three Brothers 
 reached a point of safety at Point Barrows. The 
 rudder of the Clara Bell becoming broken, she 
 drifted ashore, and was jammed into the ice, 
 while the other vessels were driven northward 
 by the floating ice, struggling in vain to reach 
 open water. Early in September, they found 
 themselves completely ice-bound off Smith s Bay, 
 twenty or thirty miles from land, and with no 
 prospect of release. Their only hope seemed 
 to lie in the abandonment of the vessels; a 
 course which was finally agreed upon. 
 
 Tents made from the sails, rations of bread 
 and meat for twenty-five days, with a change of 
 
THE FROZEN NORTH. 133 
 
 clothing and a blanket for each man, were stored 
 in the boats, which were to be dragged over the 
 ice. It was hoped that enough open water might 
 be found under the ground ice to float the boats 
 southward till the two ships, supposed to be 
 outside the ice pack, could be found. The men 
 carried the baggage ahead for half a mile, then 
 leaving it, returned to drag the boats forward. 
 The exceedingly rough ice was in many places 
 brittle, and some of the men fell through it, thus 
 becoming drenched, and suffering horribly with 
 cold. The company lay down at night worn, 
 spent, famished with cold, only four miles from 
 its starting point. 
 
 The next morning a blinding northeast snow 
 storm was raging, and a number of the wayfarers, 
 sick, lame, and discouraged, turned back to 
 the ships. 
 
 On September 6th, the intrepid wanderers 
 reached open water, in which they floated their 
 boats towards the land. On the 9th they sighted 
 the Rainbow and Three Brothers at Point 
 Barrows, and reached them before night. These 
 vessels were in the vise-like clutches of the ice, 
 and could not move. After a consultation 
 between their crews and the newcomers, it was 
 decided that the whole company should start 
 
134 THE FROZEN NORTH. 
 
 towards the open sea, probably a hundred and 
 thirty miles away, dragging the boats on sleds 
 across the ice. The sleds were made and the 
 journey begun. At Cape Smith the Florence 
 was found, and it was decided that the almost 
 hopeless journey towards the open sea should be 
 abandoned, and that they all should winter on the 
 Florence at Cape Barrows. The boats were 
 prepared for whaling, whale meat being the only 
 obtainable food. 
 
 On September 13th, there swept out from the 
 east a wind, which must have seemed to the 
 beleagured ones the very breath of God, soft, 
 warm and continuous, before which the ice broke 
 and parted and floated away ; and the released 
 Florence set her joyful sails, and turned her prow 
 in the direction of a more genial clime. 
 
 On the afternoon of the 18th, the Rainbow 
 and the Three Brothers joined the Florence, 
 bringing the crew of the Clara Bell, which had 
 been frozen into the ice. The ships appointed 
 a rendezvous at St. Lawrence Bay, where they 
 would take water. All arrived on the 23rd, and 
 there parted ways, the Florence heading for San 
 Francisco, where she arrived later, the others 
 departing for Honolulu. 
 
 Of those who remained upon and returned to 
 the vessels, nothing was ever heard. They were 
 
THE FROZEN NORTH. 135 
 
 probably carried to the northeast by the immense 
 ice packs, which closed them round for ten miles, 
 and there perished. 
 
 The loss of property through this fleet was 
 estimated at four hundred and forty-two thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 It is, of course, first of human life and human 
 suffering that one thinks in connection with such 
 disasters as this, but there is something very 
 like tragedy in the penniless, dishevled, beaten, 
 bruised, scarcely-saved condition of these men, 
 whose sustenance, and, perhaps, that of wives 
 and children, depends upon the success of their 
 voyages. 
 
 On November 5, 1871, there appeared at San 
 Francisco, from Honolulu and Australia, the 
 steamer Moses Taylor, reporting the loss of 
 thirty-three whalers, some of them crushed and 
 broken by bergs and floes, all of them abandoned 
 in the Arctic seas. No lives were lost, but the 
 estimated financial loss was one and a half million 
 dollars. Were one to follow the result of that 
 loss into individual lives, numberless tragedies 
 might be brought to light, many new dirges 
 of sorrow sounded. 
 
THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 Alone, alone ; all, all alone ! 
 Alone on a wide, wide sea ! " 
 
 Ancient Mariner. 
 
 TRISTAN DE ACUNHA-ALMOST A WRECK, 
 
 1 As beautiful Nancy was walkin one dy, 
 
 She met a young sylor, all hon the Mgh-wy, 
 E stept up beside er, and to er did sy, 
 O ware hare ye goin , tell me pretty myde ? " 
 
 " BULLY good ! " shouted a dozen gruff voices, 
 " You sing like a gen leman o forshun ! Take 
 nother turn around the capstan an give us nex 
 versh ! " 
 
 " Close-reef, first," replied the Cockney singer. 
 " Ware s the bloody bottle ? Ere, Weatherface, 
 the bottle, you lubber ! " 
 
 The British tar threw back his burly head and 
 took an observation through his tumbler. He 
 glanced round expectantly upon the crowd of 
 whalemen, awaiting a more distinct encore. 
 
 66 Nex versh ! " roared Weatherface, making 
 the low coral walls re-echo, " Nex versh ! " 
 Then they all shouted together, a Go on, Jack ! 
 Go on ! " 
 
THE CAST- A WAY. 137 
 
 So Jack Burkett took up his song again, sitting 
 astride the canoe s bows in that abandoned boat- 
 house, the light from a single lantern streaming 
 warm and yellow in his hard face while he 
 sang, 
 
 " As beautiful Nancy was walkin* one dy, 
 
 She met a young sylor, all hon the igh-wy, 
 E stept up beside her," 
 
 "Avast! Avast!" bawled Mattapoisett Joe, 
 " Avast ! you boozy lime-juicer, you ve sung 
 that verse a ready. You re half-seas over, lad. 
 You re drunk as old Weatherface." 
 
 " Old on, ye bloody Yank ! Hif ye don t like 
 me bloody chanty, then just ye sing us a bloody 
 chanty as ye do like." 
 
 "The bottle," said Mattapoisett Joe, with a 
 bland smile. " Will my brave friend Weatherface 
 kindly pass me the bottle ? First I ll splice the 
 main-brace, and then I ll sing, as requested. 
 Come, my bullies, we 11 all drink together ! Fill 
 up your glasses how s this for a toast ? 
 
 1 Be cheery, my lads ! May your hearts never fail, 
 While the bold harpooneer is a-striking the whale !* 
 
 There, clink your glasses ! now shoot the 
 sun!" 
 
138 THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 Up went twenty chins in air. Down went 
 twenty scalding gulps of New England rum. 
 
 Mattapoisett set his empty tumbler on the 
 coral window-sill, leaned heavily against the wall, 
 folded his brawny arms, and began, his round, 
 mellow baritone filling the boat-house with a fine, 
 vibrant melody. It was a voice that would have 
 been worthy of applause in better company. 
 
 " When sunk deep in sleep on the ocean, 
 Neath southern skies brilliant blue dome, 
 In fancy I hear the trees rustle, 
 That shaded my window at home. 
 I hear the flocks bleat in the meadows, 
 The cries of the men to their teams, 
 But dearer to me are the many 
 Loved faces I see in my dreams." 
 
 " Good, good, good ! " they shouted, Britons 
 and Yankees alike. Mattapoisett Joe had chosen 
 the one song that would soften every heart, the 
 " one touch of nature " that would make the 
 whole sailor-world kin. He took up the second 
 verse : 
 
 " First rises the old chimney corner, 
 And then my dear father I see, 
 Whose pride ties are over, are over, 
 His children to have on his knee. 
 And then by the bunk-board stands mother, 
 With eyes full of sweet, loving joy, 
 Who, ere going to rest, bends to offer 
 A prayer for her poor sailor boy." 
 
THE CAST-AWAY. 139 
 
 Had the light from the lantern been a very 
 little brighter, all hands might have beheld real 
 tears welling up in the eyes of Jack Weatherface, 
 but whether his tender sentimentality was due to 
 musical responsiveness, or to an affectionate dis 
 position, or to a guilty conscience, or to the 
 effects of New England rum, no fellow can say for 
 certain. His feelings, however, were those of the 
 whole company. The song had found their 
 hearts. 
 
 Mattapoisett sang on, with a half perceptible 
 quiver in his voice : 
 
 "All changeless beside me is standing, 
 A sweet girl I know, oh so well ! 
 , A voice murmurs, Break not your promise, 
 You made in the green, leafy dell ! 
 Now she s gone ; and I start from my pillow, 
 Aroused by the sea-birds wild screams, 
 And I m far, far away from those loved ones, 
 Whose faces I see in my dreams ! 
 
 There was a moment of silence. 
 
 Then " Bravo ! Bravo ! " burst from the throats 
 of the whalemen. 
 
 The low rafters shook with their applause. Six 
 tumblers were smashed in the uproar, and the 
 sashing was knocked clean out of the window- 
 frame. 
 
 " Come/ said Mattapoisett, " Curse the doleful 
 chanty ! Let s take a cruise around the old 
 
140 THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 French town ! There s a bottle half-full. Put it 
 under the canoe. When we come back we ll 
 finish it off, and then well be half -full, eh, my 
 hearties ? " 
 
 With that the twenty ruffians burst through 
 the door, all but one, the English cooper, who, 
 for half-inebriated reasons of his own, preferred 
 to remain behind in the boa1>house. 
 
 Now the palm wooded summit of " Mt. Blanc/ 
 looking down from the altitude of three thousand 
 feet, has seen many a wild time in old Victoria. 
 Often and often has the little island of Mane*, 
 though biggest of all the Seychelles, been fairly 
 made to shake under the riotous revelling of 
 whaling crews ashore. But of all the fierce nights, 
 this black and starless evening was among the 
 fiercest ; and of all the disorderly gangs ashore on 
 Mahe, these Yankees of mine and these British 
 tars from the " lime-juicer " were far to the fore. 
 
 " You know the old saw, ship-mates," sang out 
 Mattapoisett Joe, " We must all hang together or 
 we ll all hang separately ! " 
 
 " Aye-aye," said Jack Burkett, " splice helbows 
 heverybody. Hey ? my lively earties. Splice 
 helbows hall ands ! " 
 
 And so they did; nineteen tipsy sailors all lock 
 ing arms and careering wildly through the town. 
 
THE CAST-AWAY. 141 
 
 They danced around a gens d armes, they over 
 turned a fruiterer s truck, they smashed a 
 dozen windows, and they kissed all the girls they 
 could find on the streets. Then they locked arms 
 once more, and charged down the main avenue of 
 Victoria on their way back to the boat-house. 
 
 " Half bottle left ! " gurgled poor, old Weather- 
 face. " Splice main brace, brace main splice, 
 close-reef ! " 
 
 As has already been intimated, the cooper of 
 the English whaleship, though absent, had not 
 been made conspicuous by his absence. Now, 
 however, as the rollicking party tumbled into the 
 boai>house again, the cooper became shockingly 
 conspicuous by his presence. 
 
 He lay stretched out in the canoe, like the 
 Lady of Shalott, and he was quite as unconscious 
 as that unfortunate celebrity. Beside him lay 
 the bottle ( a " dead soldier " ) entirely empty. 
 
 At first sight of so horrid a spectacle a howl of 
 dismay went up from the crowd. 
 
 "Blast his toppy blood-lights!" roared 
 Weatherface. "How ll we main splice-brace 
 now ? " 
 
 "Curse the cooper," said Burkett, "we ll 
 cooper im; we ll put the oops on im; we ll 
 ammer is styves ! " 
 
142 THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 But Mattapoisett was the recognized ring 
 leader. "Avast!" he cried, "See all clear! 
 Shove them big doors open ! We 11 do for 
 the son of a sea-cook ! We 11 do for him hand 
 some ! Bear a hand there, my bully chummies, 
 handsomely ! Cheerily ! Now, shipmates, all 
 together ! " 
 
 With that the ruffians seized hold of the 
 cooper s canoe, rushed it swiftly down the beach, 
 and launched it out into the darkness and the 
 night. 
 
 Then they staggered back into their lair, shut 
 the big doors, laid in a new bottle of "close- 
 reef," drank the health of the cast-away cooper, 
 and toasted his many virtues. 
 
 They topped off the barrel-smith s obsequies 
 with that ghastly sailor-song since made famous 
 by Stevenson : 
 
 ** Fifteen men on the dead man s chest, 
 Yo - ho -ho, and a bottle of rum." 
 
 " Rum, rum, rum, an bottle o ho - ho ! " mut 
 tered the hilarious Weatherface. " Let by-gones 
 be gones ! Somebody sing sholly janty ! " 
 
 Burkett, so merry that he had quite forgotten 
 his somewhat recent discomfiture, called lustily 
 for a chanty from Mattapoisett Joe. The whole 
 crowd took up the cry. 
 
THE CAST-AWAY. 143 
 
 It was really wonderful what a cargo Matta- 
 poisett could carry. He was a little uncertain in 
 his steps, and he had an air of general inaccuracy 
 that shook one s faith in his mental stability, yet 
 his tongue had not forgotten its cunning. 
 
 The song as a song was a genuine triumph. 
 Ah, yes ; but the selection was most unfortunate. 
 It was entitled " The Sailor s Grave," and ran like 
 this : 
 
 " Our bark was far, far from the land, 
 When the fairest of our gallant band, 
 Grew deadly pale and weaned away, 
 Like the twilight hours of an autumn day. 
 We watched him through long hours of pain ; 
 Our cares were great, our hopes in vain. 
 At death s stroke he showed no coward alarms, 
 But smiled and died in his messmates arms. 
 
 " We had no costly winding-sheet, 
 We placed two-pound shot at his feet ; 
 He lay in his hammock as snug and proud 
 As a king in his long robe, marble bound. 
 We proudly decked his funeral vest, 
 With the stars and stripes across his breast 
 We gave him these as a badge of the brave, 
 And then he was fit for a sailor s grave. 
 
 "Our voices failed, our hearts grew weak, 
 Hot tears were seen on brownest cheek, 
 A quiver played on the lip of pride, 
 As we lowered him over the ship s dark side. 
 A plunge, and a splash, and it all was o er, 
 The billows rolled as they rolled before ; 
 But many a wild prayer hallowed the wave, 
 As he sank to rest in a sailor s grave. 
 
 It may seem strange till you stop to think of it, 
 but no applause rewarded the song. Each man 
 
144 THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 had solemn and guilty thoughts in his heart, which 
 were roused into terrible activity by Burkett s 
 ill-chosen chanty. Yet no one spoke. The men 
 were squatting on the boat-house floor, leaning 
 lazily against the white walls. The yellow 
 lantern was smoking dismally. 
 
 At this junction, so ominous of sullen resent 
 ment and its possible result in blows, if not 
 bloodshed, a sudden interruption changed the 
 scene abruptly. 
 
 There was a loud rapping on the door and cries 
 of " Ouvrez la porte, ouvrez aux gens d armes, 
 vous etes nos prisonniers ! Place aux officiers ! " 
 
 A dozen uniformed Frenchmen, armed to the 
 teeth, dashed into the boat-house ; great con 
 fusion ensued ; several pistol-shots were fired into 
 the air ; there were grapplings and blows here 
 and there ; and then the biggest of the gens 
 d armes, no doubt a sort of prefect of police, 
 screamed out in broken English, a Silence ! Je 
 command silence ; you think you pouvez raise le 
 didble in zis place ! You think you pouvez 
 embrace tous les dames! I tell you non, non, 
 NON, messieurs ! " 
 
 Amazed at the brilliant behavior of the prefect, 
 the whalemen " came to order." In an instant 
 the boathouse seemed transformed from a field 
 of battle to a court of justice. 
 
THE CAST-AWAY. 145 
 
 Mattapoisett pleaded for the whole crowd, 
 urging that his followers were a well-meaning 
 lot of lads ; gentle little things, you know, and 
 very young ; and that they were not altogether 
 familiar with the customs of Mahe, and had 
 offended unwittingly. How were an innocent 
 crew of foreigners to know that the ladies of 
 Victoria objected to being promiscuously kissed ? 
 In New Bedford, he insisted, it was so different. 
 They were very, very sorry, and would never^ 
 never, never disturb the island again. 
 
 The upshot of the matter was that the drunken 
 sailors were all shipped off to the whalers in the- 
 harbor; and, thanks to Mattapoisett s logic and 
 rhetoric, no arrests were made. However a gens 
 d armes came aboard the Hope to notify me that 
 my crew had received an official reprimand, and 
 from the Hope he went directly to the captain of 
 the lime juicer. 
 
 " del!" he said, "Vos hommes, ne sont-ils pas 
 mechants ?" 
 
 Now, when the English officers counted noses 
 next morning, they found many a grog-blossomed 
 bill, but there were not quite bills enough to suit 
 them. Some one was missing. 
 
 There was no cooper to be found amongst the 
 crew ! 
 
 10 
 
146 
 
 THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 Apparently the cooper had deserted ; or was it 
 not possible that he had been arrested and jailed 
 for participation in the night s disturbances ? In 
 either case there was but one thing to do appeal 
 to the authorities on shore. 
 
 This the bold Briton reluctantly did, hating 
 above all things to ask a favor of a Frenchman. 
 At the same time he sent off a boat to call at 
 every ship in the harbor and request that diligent 
 search for the missing cooper be made on board. 
 The day went by ; the whole island and the 
 whole harbor were searched with the utmost care ; 
 but the lost sheep could nowise be brought back 
 into the fold. 
 
 A council extraordinary met in the forecastle of 
 of the lime juicer that afternoon and chose Jack 
 Burkett as their unwilling spokesman, deputing 
 him to proceed to the quarter-deck and to render 
 to the captain a full and complete confession of 
 their manifold sins and wickednesses, neither dis 
 sembling nor cloaking them, but acknowledging 
 them all " with an humble, lowly, penitent and 
 obedient heart." 
 
 So Burkett went aft upon the hateful errand. 
 He told the whole disgraceful story nineteen 
 sailors crazy with rum, the English cooper set 
 adrift in an oarless and paddleless canoe, and a 
 strong tide running out to the ocean. 
 
THE CAST-AWAY. 147 
 
 Rage like that of a frenzied demon blazed from 
 the old man s tough countenance. He swore a 
 volley of terrible curses. 
 
 But as soon as he came to himself he realized 
 that not a moment was to be lost in the mere 
 indulgence of righteous wrath ; so, calling " Hall 
 ands " aft, he detailed the men to various duties 
 in rescue service. 
 
 The mast-heads were to be manned directly. 
 Two boats were to spread the news through the 
 harbor and ask assistance in the name of human 
 ity. The other boats were to sail and row out to 
 sea as far as they dared and with all speed, keep 
 ing wide apart, to cover as large an area as 
 possible, and search for the cooper s canoe. 
 
 I gladly lent my services in so imperative an 
 enterprise. I was the more eager to help find the 
 cooper because, years and years before, I had seen 
 a cooper buried at sea, and my sympathies were 
 touched and my fears aroused by the recollection 
 of that pitiful scene. Was the poor English 
 barrel-smith to be lost in the deep, buried in its 
 restless waters, and not to be honored with even 
 the formal reading of a written service ? 
 
 It is strange with what vividness such impres 
 sions live in one s memory, and upon what slender 
 grounds of suggestion they rise anew into activity. 
 
148 THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 It seemed but as yesterday that we had left Talcu- 
 huano for a cruise on the coast of Chili, and we 
 were only a few days from port when our cooper 
 fell violently ill. We were within a day s sail of 
 Valparaiso, so the old man steered for that port 
 and went on shore for medical advice. He 
 returned with some medicine, but it proved of 
 no avail. Next day the cooper died. We kept 
 him till the following afternoon, and then we 
 buried him. 
 
 At four o clock the ship s headway was stopped, 
 the stars and stripes flung out at half-mast, and all 
 hands called to bury the dead. Wrapped in his 
 blanket and sewed in strong canvas, with a bag of 
 sand ballast at his feet, the dead man s body was 
 brought to the waist and laid gently on the gang 
 way board. As the captain read the solemn 
 service, the men uncovered and bowed their heads. 
 At the words " We commit his body to the deep," 
 the pall-bearers lifted the body slowly at the head ; 
 and then all that remained to us of our ship 
 mate was the pleasant memory he left behind him, 
 for he had always been a favorite among our crew. 
 So we left him to his peaceful, dreamless sleep, 
 " there to await the general resurrection in the 
 last day." That night I read with a better 
 understanding the cheering words of the Apostle, 
 
THE CAST-AWAY. 149 
 
 " This mortal shall put on immortality." (You 
 didn t know they had Bibles on whale-ships? Yes, 
 they do ; and what s more, they read them.) I 
 had witnessed many burials on shore, but none 
 had ever impressed itself so indelibly upon my 
 mind as this solemn burial at sea. 
 
 Nor was this the only tragical recollection that 
 haunted my mind as we joined in that heart 
 breaking search for the castaway. 
 
 For my thoughts went out to a certain, place 
 upon the northern end of Bird Island, one of this 
 same Seychelles Group a spot I have ever since 
 called the mournfullest as well as the most deso 
 late place in the whole world. There, grouped 
 together upon a lonely, sun-beaten flat, whose 
 stillness is broken only by the heavy, rolling surf 
 that dashes on the shore, are the graves of a dozen 
 sailors who have been buried from whale-ships 
 cruising around those banks for whales. 
 
 Once more I seemed to be standing alone 
 among those uncared-for graves, and looking 
 out across the waste of waters toward the distant 
 home, thinking I could see some poor mother 
 waiting and longing and watching, and at last so 
 grievously disappointed ; or perhaps a wife and 
 her little children, enduring prolonged separation 
 from the one best loved of all, because they are 
 
150 THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 saying, " It can t be much longer, dearie, it 
 cant be much longer ! " 
 
 Then was this poor English cooper to be denied 
 even so desolate a resting-place as the sailor s 
 cemetery on Bird Island ? 
 
 And who I could not help asking who 
 would be the broken-hearted ones at home ? 
 Who would listen with grief and with tears to 
 the shameful story of the drunken castaway and 
 his tragical end ? Oh, there would be sorrow and 
 mourning in that little English hamlet on the 
 Devonshire coast ! Not tonight, nor tomorrow 
 night ; but a whole year hence, it might be, or 
 even longer, when the tale would be told at home 
 by the very men who had sent the cooper to his 
 doom. 
 
 Darkness settled like a pall upon our dishearten 
 ing enterprise. The stars, blazing down from 
 that southern sky, glared pitiless and cruel. The 
 moon red, sullen, mockingly splendid rose 
 out of the ocean and made a broad, straight path 
 to the horizon. (Out upon that path, the men 
 said, the cooper s canoe had gone.) " Mt. Blanc " 
 loomed black in the far distance. We could still 
 see the lights on the ships in the harbor, though 
 the lights of the town had already sunk into 
 the sea. 
 
THE CAST-AWAY. 151 
 
 At last we turned back and went aboard the 
 whalers. We had satisfied ourselves that the 
 cooper had ere this met his death. 
 
 There was grief and remorse aboard the Hope. 
 Half our men had murder written red across 
 their souls. 
 
 All the next day the crew brooded and repented 
 and growled. There were no songs in the fore 
 castle. There was no mention of " The Sailor s 
 Grave." There was no allusion to faces seen in 
 dreams. They had all seen the same face. Nor 
 was there any inclination to go ashore. The town 
 was a haunted town, the boatrhouse a haunted 
 house. The men longed to leave port. In the 
 changeless routine of sailing or the adventurous 
 vicissitudes of whale-hunting, they could forget 
 their crime. 
 
 And so even the third day went by much as 
 had the others before it, though there was a lively 
 scuffle in the forecastle late that afternoon. Mat- 
 tapoisett Joe was knocked down and jumped upon 
 by three of his shipmates. 
 
 When I looked into the matter I found that 
 Mattapoisett had been assaulted as a punishment 
 for what do you think ? whistling ! A trivial 
 offense, you say. Yes, but listen. 
 
 " You can t blame us, sir, said Weatherface, 
 when all hands had been called aft for the investi- 
 
152 THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 gation. "He was whistling the tune of that 
 devilish song, 
 
 " Fifteen men on the dead man s chest, 
 To- ho - ho, and a bottle of rum. 
 
 If you was us, you d jumped on him, too, sir! 
 
 I turned to the bruised whistler, and I said, 
 " Joe, my man, what shall I do to these lads ? " 
 
 " Let em all go, sir," said Mattapoisett, " I got 
 no more n I deserved." 
 
 "Now go forward, every man of you," said I, 
 " and let me hear no more of your troubles." 
 
 I say the third day went by. Perhaps that is 
 an over-statement. As my men started forward, 
 the sun was already setting. The whole harbor 
 was red in its glare. 
 
 No sooner had the crew left the quarter-deck 
 than loud cheers were heard off to starboard. 
 The men on the British whaler were dancing 
 about like lunatics, pitching their caps into the 
 air, and shouting themselves hoarse. 
 
 " Urrigh ! Urrigh ! ! Urrigh ! ! ! " they yelled. 
 " Ere s for the cooper, once more, boys, 
 Urri-i-i-i-igh ! " 
 
 A tiny fishing smack had been beating up the 
 harbor for the last hour, and now she was coming 
 alongside the lime-juicer. Once within hailing 
 
THE CAST- A WAY. 158 
 
 distance, her skipper had cried out to the British 
 captain, "Ahoy, monsieur! Ahoy! J ai votre 
 coopier ! " 
 
 No cooper was seen, but the cooper s canoe 
 followed close in the wake of the sloop. 
 
 Just then two heads appeared above the fisher 
 man s hatch-way. A moment more, and a third 
 head came in view. 
 
 It was the cooper pale and sick and haggard, 
 but still alive carried in the arms of his 
 preservers. 
 
 " Hurray ! Hurray ! " our sailors answered 
 when they fully took in the situation. Then they 
 danced as wildly as the Englishmen, hugged each 
 other like school-girls, and all but wept for joy. 
 
 " Hip, hip ! " shouted Mattapoisett Joe, forget- 
 ing his bruises. 
 
 " Hurr-a-a-a-a-a-a-y ! ! ! !" yelled the whole 
 crew, and I yelled with them. 
 
 That night after supper I gave orders to my 
 men to put on their Sunday clothes, and to dress 
 our boats with all the bunting they could carry. 
 
 Weatherface was to bring his fiddle or be put in 
 irons. Little Tom Bunker was to bring his accor 
 dion or suffer a similar penalty. The cabin-boy, 
 a mere creeper on the face of the earth, was to 
 remain behind as ship-keeper. 
 
154 THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 Then we manned the boats, lowered away, and 
 pulled to the merry lime-juicer. 
 
 We found ourselves no unexpected guests. 
 Elaborate preparations had been made for our 
 entertainment. The " doctor " had filled his " cop 
 pers " with the most toothsome of land fare. The 
 crew had dressed up to receive us. The ship had 
 been loaded with bright-colored bunting. The 
 decks had been cleared for dancing. There was 
 an all-round, rollicking, sailorly good time that 
 lasted till midnight. 
 
 The poor cooper, though fully conscious of the 
 honors being paid him, was too weak and wretched 
 to join in the festivities. A doctor from on shore 
 came off to look at him, and recommended hot 
 milk as a harmless restorative. When I looked in 
 upon the cooper the poor fellow turned his head 
 mournfully on his pillow and said, " Shiver my 
 soul, but I feel like a ard-boiled owl ! " 
 
 Next morning we hoisted our Blue Peter, a 
 homeward bounder. It was worth a cask of 
 sperm oil to hear our crew sing at the windlass as 
 they hove up anchor. I was an old sea-dog even 
 in those days; I didn t come through the cabin 
 windows ; I was put through the mill, ground and 
 bolted ; but never in all my long and varied salt 
 water experience had I heard a crew sing better. 
 
THE CAST- A WAY. 155 
 
 Mattapoisett s resonant baritone carried the solo 
 lines superbly. The crew shouted the refrain 
 with spirit or, as little Tom Bunker said, " with 
 great venom." 
 
 41 My boy he was a sailor, he sailed away to sea, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 " But when he went to sea he vow,d he d soon come back to me! 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 "He sailed upon a vessel, a- whaling for to go, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 " It was a tedious journey, but he was bound to go, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 " The captain was a good man, a sailor to the core, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 "T was early in the morning, the watch was down below, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 " A sailor in the mainmast crow s-nest sang out There she blows! 
 
 Heave away, my hearties, heave away, my boys ! 
 ** They lowered the boats and struck the whale, and soon the 
 monster died, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 " They tied a rope upon him tight, and towed him alongside, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 " We cut him in and tried him out, and stowed him down below, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 "We ll set all sail, and head her straight, and homeward we will go, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 " And soon we shall be home again; our friends we soon shall see, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 * And when we see New Bedford, we will no more go to sea, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 " And when we go longside the wharf, and put our feet on shore, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties ; heave away, my boys ! 
 " You can gamble that we ll never go a-whaling any more, 
 
 Heave away, my hearties; heave away, my boys! " 
 
 It was just about Christmas time, fine hot 
 weather, that we came within sight of Tristan de 
 Acunha, Lat. 37 S., and Long. 12 16 W. The 
 
156 THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 Portuguese discoverer, whose name the island 
 bears, put in his first appearance, so I have read, 
 in 1506. He certainly deserves to have his name 
 thus immortalized for he gave the world a new 
 treasure, indeed a very pearl of an island, seven 
 miles across, as round as a dollar, and enclosing a 
 fresh-water lake which never freezes. That, no 
 doubt, is explained by the volcanic nature of the 
 whole formation. Cliffs, straight as a castle wall, 
 tower up from the water s edge to a height of 
 two thousand feet. Harbor there is none, and 
 but for a narrow inlet on the north side, no ade 
 quate landing place. A group of white-washed 
 stone houses on the north-west shore is the 
 nearest approach to a town anywhere on the 
 island. 
 
 Now the reason all these details have fastened 
 themselves so tenaciously upon my memory is 
 that right here I came near losing my ship. It 
 was late in the afternoon, and we were taking off 
 supplies from the shore. The wind our only 
 stay since it was too deep water for our best 
 bower to touch bottom had died out to a calm. 
 It was an Irishman s hurricane, straight up and 
 down; and yet the strong ground-swell of the 
 ocean kept carrying us further and further in 
 shore. We cracked on every stitch of canvas we 
 
THE CAST-AWAY. 157 
 
 could spread, and with half a hand at the billows 
 we should have forged ahead all fluking ; but as it 
 was, our sails hung as limp as the dangling damp 
 sheets on an indoor clothes-horse. There was not 
 a bubble of white water at our prow. There was 
 not a streak or ripple in our wake. And yet 
 moment by moment those awful cliffs grew taller. 
 We sent out a boat with a line then two boats 
 then three ! trying our sturdiest to ratch the 
 precious barky out of imminent danger. At last 
 the cliff-crests seemed to rise no higher, though 
 we dared not trust our eyes, we so longed to see 
 them stop rising. Already the breakers pounded 
 ominously at their feet. Already the sea-birds, 
 nesting amongst their crags, called hideously near. 
 By chance or rather, as I have always said, 
 by the providence of God another ship and 
 she a whaler, lay not far from us. I set my colors 
 for assistance, and down into the water came her 
 boats, the davit-blocks creaking and the whale 
 men shouting encouragement to our three boats 
 crews. Swift as so many racers in a regatta, the 
 stranger s cedar craft came ripping through the 
 smooth water, every dip and plash of their oars 
 seeming measurably to lift and lighten the burden 
 of our suspense. Six boats and thirty-six men 
 saved the Hope from being sent on that iron- 
 
158 
 
 THE CAST-AWAY. 
 
 bound shore. We towed her well off shore, and 
 a tardy flaw of wind at last bellied out her canvas. 
 Then is it any wonder that I have never forgotten 
 Tristan de Acunha ? 
 
THE WHALEMAN WHO WENT 
 ON THE STAGE. 
 
 Being in a ship is being in jail, with a chance of being drowned." 
 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson. 
 
 JOHN PIERCE certainly came down from aloft. 
 There could be no possible doubt about that. I 
 certainly spoke with him as he passed me on his 
 way to the forecastle. This much, I am sure, will 
 never be called in question. 
 
 But what followed even to this hour it makes 
 me shudder, sickened with dread, to recall what 
 followed the days of anxiety, the grim mystery, 
 the final despair, and the haunting, harrowing 
 problem of that tragical disappearance ! 
 
 We had put in at Fayal to ship home some 
 hundred barrels and more of sperm oil, and then 
 cleared away and steered to the south, carrying 
 all sail to get away from the island. We left at 
 five in the afternoon, and by eleven o clock that 
 night, when we had made about fifteen miles 
 offing, I gave orders to take in our top-gallant 
 sails, and poor Pierce went aloft with the others. 
 As he slid down the backstay and passed me on 
 deck, I had a pleasant word with him, and then he 
 
160 WHALEMAN" ON THE STAGE. 
 
 went forward and was lost to view in the darkness. 
 Many a time since then have I had reason to be 
 glad that my last words to the man were kind. 
 
 At four next morning, when the watch was 
 called, no John Pierce could be found. 
 
 Every nook and every smallest cranny in the 
 whole ship was looked into, but all to no purpose. 
 Not a trace of the fellow could we discover. 
 Reluctantly at last we gave him up as lost, 
 convinced against our wills that he had tumbled 
 overboard during the night. 
 
 A solemn hush fell upon us. Hardened, though 
 most of us were, and accustomed to the constant 
 dangers of a seaman s calling used though we 
 were to these sudden disappearances from life and 
 duty we could never be reconciled to them. 
 Indeed, it seemed as if each new death of this sort 
 were more dreadful than the one before it. 
 
 But, as usual, the sense of shock and of wrong 
 went by. The man s absence ceased to impress 
 us. At last we had almost forgotten the circum 
 stance of his taking off. 
 
 About one year from the night of Pierce s 
 disappearance, we were cruising off Madagascar. 
 
 I happened that day to be running over my 
 log-book and chanced upon the entry of the facts 
 noted above. There \vas the record in my own 
 
A CAPTAIN IN HIS ARCTIC OUTFIT. 
 
WHALEMAN ON THE STAGE. 161 
 
 hand, a deep border of black drawn around it. I 
 found that I had departed from the usual dry and 
 formal log-book style. Indeed, I had sentimental 
 ized not a little. Viewing, in calmer mood, this 
 eulogy of John Pierce, I could not help feeling a 
 little amused. I had always made fun of funeral 
 sermons, and here I had been preaching one 
 myself in black and white. 
 
 As I was in the midst of this reverie, the cabin- 
 boy dropped down the stairway to bring word that 
 a whale-ship had just been sighted. It was not 
 long after that, with customary ceremonies, we 
 spoke her. She proved to be an old friend from 
 Sag Harbor. 
 
 We kept fairly close together until sundown, 
 and then the Sag Harbor captain and boat s crew 
 came on board to spend the evening. 
 
 There in the boat, to our utter amazement, was 
 JOHN PIERCE ! He had grown a stubby beard 
 since last we had seen him, but that was no dis 
 guise. There he was (to my infinite relief) alive 
 and well the same unmistakable, happy - go - 
 lucky, jolly Jack Tar as before he had gone to 
 his watery grave. It was enough to make a man 
 believe in the transmigration of souls ! I was 
 mightily glad to see him alive, though, to tell the 
 
 truth, I had not greatly missed his services. 
 11 
 
162 WHALEMAN ON THE STAGE. 
 
 We got a part of the story from the Sag Harbor 
 captain. It seems they had sailed out of port 
 about ten in the morning, the next day after 
 Pierce s strange disappearance. At four that after 
 noon, when they were about fifteen miles from the 
 land, the man at the lookout on the mainmast 
 head reported something in sight, floating on the 
 water about two miles from the ship. The captain 
 went aloft with the glass to have a look at it, but 
 could not make out what it was, only he was certain 
 it was something alive, for it kept moving and 
 wriggling all the while, as if to attract attention 
 from the ship. The old man s curiosity was so 
 thoroughly aroused by this time that he veered 
 off his course and steered straight for the strange 
 object. 
 
 " When I came near enough," said the captain, 
 " What should I see through my glass but a little 
 live man, squatting on the surface of the water 
 and waving his arms ! Yes, that s the real truth, 
 and I give an honest seaman s word for it." 
 
 My eyes were well open by this time, and I 
 was beginning to believe the story. 
 
 Talk about mermaids and sea-serpents and the 
 Flying Dutchman and the rest of the fo cas le 
 nonsense ! Here was a real, genuine thing to beat 
 em all ! 
 
WHALEMAN ON THE STAGE. 163 
 
 " But the lad s aboard now. Here, John Pierce, 
 come into the cabin, my man, and tell Captain 
 Bobbins the stiffest twister he ever listened to ! 
 Come, make a clean breast of it. Tell us how 
 you proved yourself the fool - hardiest, dare- 
 devilest galley-growler that ever earned a sailor s 
 blessing ! " 
 
 Pierce had already come, unwilling and with 
 much hesitation, through the cabin door. Appar 
 ently he was gladder to see me than he was to 
 have to talk with me. 
 
 " Give us your flipper, boy ; how are you ? " 
 said I. 
 
 Pierce grinned sheepishly. " Oh, I m all right," 
 he answered, a right enough anyhow for a fellow 
 that s been a whole good year in the bottom of 
 the sea." 
 
 " Come, come," said the captain, " out with it ! 
 Tell the whole outrageous yarn from beginning 
 to end or I ll log you, haze you, clap the darbies 
 on your wrists, make a spread eagle of you, and 
 invite you to walk the plank; and then if that 
 won t do, I ll shut you up in the run and feed you 
 on bread and water ! " 
 
 We laughed, all three, and the bashful Pierce 
 sat down between the two " old men " and took 
 up his parable. 
 
164 WHALEMAN ON THE STAGE. 
 
 " Fact is," he began reluctantly, " Stormy Jones 
 and I got sick o the voyage. No thin personal, 
 Cap n, only we just thought we d got to have a 
 change. 
 
 " So I says to Jones, shipmate, says I, let s 
 move ! 
 
 " Avast, says he, where the deuce ll we 
 move to ? 
 
 " Then says I to Jones, Stormy, says I, you 
 know them stages ? 
 
 " What o them stages ? Jones asks, never 
 taking my meaning. 
 
 " Then I says to Jones, Bear a bob, messmate, 
 till I tell you the news. This is what we ll up 
 and do. We ll lower one of them stages over the 
 ship s bows in the middle o some dark night and 
 we ll float away on it, us two, and before we re 
 old and gray and toothless some ship or other ll 
 come along and pick us up. 
 
 " Risky, says Jones. 
 
 " Aye, aye, sir, says I, < Its risky, maybe, and 
 risky maybe not. Ships go in schools like cow 
 whales on these here grounds. Say we try it, my 
 man! 
 
 " Then Stormy agrees, old hypocrit as he is, 
 and next thing you know he goes and backs out 
 of it, and I finds myself turned captain and mate 
 
WHALEMAN ON THE STAGE. 165 
 
 and crew and cabin-boy of a craft eight feet long 
 and just fifteen inches wide. But I says to myself, 
 6 Pierce, you fool, you re in for it now, so trust 
 to luck for your miserable life. If you don t 
 do the act that Jones will tell the crew, and then 
 you ll have hell afloat the rest of the voyage. 
 
 " Well, Cap n Bobbins, you remember that 
 night I took my leave. You thought I d gone 
 overboard, didn t you ? You was dead right, cap n, 
 dead right, right as a right whale. That s just 
 where I had gone. But you thought I d lost the 
 number of my mess, and in that you were all 
 wrong ! " 
 
 I stared at Pierce, my eyes big with wonder. 
 The Sag Harbor captain stared at me, a broad 
 grin covering his hard red face as he watched me 
 take in this ridiculous confirmation of his story. 
 
 I said nothing. 
 
 " Go on, Pierce," said Pierce s captain. 
 
 " Well," said the sailor, " you ve got most of the 
 yarn a ready, sir. But, Lord ! how my heart 
 sickened when I heard that stage go plunk into 
 the water on the Pope s bow. Then I slipped 
 down onto it and let go. It was all I could do 
 not to holler for help as the stage slipped aft in 
 the swash. Oh, but I was sick o the job ! After 
 awhile I did holler, but it was too late. Nobody 
 
166 WHALEMAN ON THE STAGE. 
 
 could hear me. Then I says, Pierce, my hearty, 
 you ll never 11 see your Nancy ! 
 
 " You know the rest. The cap n here picked 
 me up when I was as hungry as a polar bear, and 
 deathly faint and scared and discouraged. 
 
 " But what beats me, Cap n Bobbins, is that 
 Jones held his tongue all that while and never 
 told you the news ; for if ever a seaman was 
 rigged with self-acting jawing tackle, it s that 
 same lubberly coward of a stormy Jones ! " 
 
 This ended the mighty yarn. The Sag Harbor 
 man beamed red as a sunset. 
 
 " Aha, sir," said he, " you thought I could swear 
 through a nine-inch plank, didn t you ? But it s 
 true, every word, just as I tell you and just as my 
 man Pierce has said. And, Pierce, if the Cap n 
 has no objections, you may go for ard and see if 
 you can t find some of your old shipmates in the 
 fo cas le." 
 
 " Pierce," I added, " when you feel like it, you 
 may come back here and read your epitaph in the 
 log-book. You ll never recognize it as your own, 
 I ll warrant." 
 
 Then the Sag Harbor man lit his pipe, leaned 
 back in his chair, crossed his stout legs, and 
 changed the subject. By the way, Cap n," said 
 
WHALEMAN ON THE STAGE. 167 
 
 he, " what do you hear from New Bedford ? They 
 tell me its the busiest station on the Underground 
 Railroad." 
 
t t 
 
 WHALES HAS FEELIN S." 
 
 " Whales has feelin s as well as anybody. They don t like to be stuck in the 
 gizzards, an hauled alongside, an cut in, an tried out in these here boilers no 
 more n I do! " Barzy Mack s Biology. 
 
 THE whale having gone down, we waited for 
 him to come up again. Three boats danced idly 
 upon the warm Madagascan water the mate s, 
 the second mate s and my own. The sun blazed 
 viciously down from a cloudless sky. 
 
 We lay well apart, covering a large area of 
 swelling, billowy sea. When the whale came up 
 again, the real battle would begin. 
 
 A whole hour we waited in anxious expectance. 
 As is natural at such times, my thoughts, mean 
 while, ran back years and years to other whales 
 and other fights. Once when I was a cabin boy I 
 had stood three hours in the stern of a stoven 
 boat, sunk just to the gunwale, while two wounded 
 whales were cutting about and making the water 
 white with their huge flukes, so near that it 
 seemed they must kill me. Was the monster, 
 down below in those vague amethystine depths, 
 preparing some such terrors for the present occa 
 sion ? I recalled, too, how once a dying whale 
 had brought his spout-hole up against our boat 
 
^> ^ s* 
 
 ,,i 
 
 H. 
 
 L "# 
 
 ! e: ; 
 
"WHALES HAS FEELIN S." 169 
 
 and belched barrelsfull of gore all over us, so that 
 when I opened my eyes every man was painted 
 red completely covered with fresh, hot blood, 
 so that we all jumped into the water for a hasty 
 bath. Was this sunken leviathan making ready 
 to serve us thus today ? I also remembered how 
 a gigantic spouter had tossed me on his flukes 
 boat, boat s crew, craft and all whist! 
 twenty feet into the air, till it seemed that we d 
 never come down ; and how I found myself at 
 last launched adrift, clinging to a piece of the 
 steering-oar, which had snapped off at the stern- 
 post of the shattered boat. Had not this whale 
 flukes also ? How would he use them ? Should 
 / be his victim ? or the mate ? or the third mate ? 
 There is something delicious in this exciting 
 uncertainty. It makes your blood tingle. It 
 makes your nerves thrill. It makes you feel 
 yourself ready to face the whole world of perils 
 and proudly conquer them all. You stand in the 
 stern-sheets, leaning on the steering-oar, and as 
 you look into the faces of those five stalwart men 
 on the thwarts before you, you tell yourself they 
 are fine heroes, every man Jack of them. Yes, 
 heroes ! Soldiers face no greater perils. Soldiers 
 win no worthier laurels. Back of every trophy of 
 military valor, you must needs see human blood- 
 
170 "WHALES HAS FEELIN S." 
 
 shed, human bereavement, human cruelty, and, 
 far too often, the human lust for name and place. 
 But the whaleman s glories are sullied by no such 
 shameful pollution. Is he rich when his sea- 
 toiling days are done ? He has impoverished no 
 one. Instead, he has added to the world s wealth. 
 Is he successful in the pursuit of his calling ? No 
 widow and no tearful orphans mourn over his 
 triumphs. Is he proud of his profession ? He 
 can claim for it the good name of an honest liveli 
 hood, a lawful and law-abiding business, a field 
 for soldierly courage purged of soldierly brutality. 
 Nor do tyrany and oppression follow in his paths. 
 Instead, come only the blessings of a peaceful 
 prosperity. 
 
 So, as I was saying, you stand and wait, a-tingle 
 with enthusiasm. You are in your glory now. 
 You would not for the whole world be any other 
 thing but a whaleman. You are glad that your 
 boyhood anticipated this splendid life of adven 
 ture, and aspired after its high responsibilities. To 
 its toils and its perils you willingly devote your 
 youth and best manhood. You will be proud, in 
 long years to come, to recount the history of your 
 daring sea-battles. 
 
 Few landsmen can understand these things. 
 You must go a-blubber-hunting on your own 
 
"WHALES HAS FEELIN s." 171 
 
 account, fully to grasp their meaning. In fact 
 I know of only one land-lubber who ever really 
 caught the spirit of the whale-hunt, and that is 
 old Walt Whitman, who wrote those splendid, 
 pictorial lines (albeit they go devoid of rhyme, 
 and, in place of precise metre, have only a feeble 
 and slovenly wobble) : 
 
 " O the whaleman s joys! O I cruise my old cruise again! 
 I feel the ship s motion under me, I feel the Atlantic breezes 
 
 fanning me. 
 I hear the cry again sent down from the mast-head, There she 
 
 blows ! 
 Again I spring up the rigging to look with the rest we descend, 
 
 wild with excitement, 
 
 I leap in the lowered boat, we row toward our prey where he lies, 
 We approach stealthy and silent, I see the mountainous mass, 
 
 lethargic, basking, 
 I see the harpooner standing up, I see the weapon dart from his 
 
 vigorous arm ; 
 
 swift again far out in the ocean the wounded whale, settling, 
 
 running to windward, tows me. 
 Again I see him rise to breathe, we row close again, 
 
 1 see a lance driven through his side, pressed deep, turned in the 
 
 wound, 
 Again we back off, I see him settle again, the life is leaving him 
 
 fast. 
 As he rises he spouts blood, I see him swim in circles narrower and 
 
 narrower, swiftly cutting the water 
 I see him die. 
 He gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle, and then 
 
 falls flat and still in the bloody foam." 
 
 Barring the single sentence " I see the moun 
 tainous mass/ (apparently Whitman thought a 
 whale cruised around two-thirds out of water, like 
 
172 " WHALES HAS FEELIN s." 
 
 a steam-boat) that is a perfect description of the 
 taking of the whale. It is more than that. It is 
 the picture of the inner experience of the chase 
 and the fight the joy of it, the glow of it, the 
 wild, fierce thrill of it ! 
 
 I was wishing with all my heart, as we waited 
 for that submarine lounger to return to the sur 
 face, that I could somehow tell which boat would 
 get a chance to fasten to him. 
 
 But a sudden end to reminiscence and philoso 
 phizing. Look ! There is frantic excitement in 
 the mate s boat off to leeward " Stand up and 
 give it to him ! Quick, quick, quick I " See ! a 
 figure erect in the boat s bow a long shaft 
 wielded in both hands high over the man s head 
 a momentary poise a swift, springing motion 
 a sudden recoil the harpoon hurtling through the 
 air the slender line singing after it the weapon 
 sunk fast in something, and that something 
 sinking rapidly into the depths, dragging the line 
 through the chocks so fast the druggs could do 
 nothing to steady it fifty fathoms a hun 
 dred two hundred ! The mate and the har- 
 pooner have changed places. The men dodged 
 the flying line. 
 
 Now followed a fresh period of suspense 
 anxious, but brief. 
 
"WHALES HAS FEELIN S." 173 
 
 After a few minutes, there was a sudden uproar 
 in the second mate s boat. Again the excited cry, 
 " Stand up quick give it to him ! ! Again a 
 heavy harpoon was sent a-whizzing through the 
 air, and plunging deep into that awful, water- 
 hidden something. Again the confusion in the 
 boat and the preparation for lancing. 
 
 Responsive to the stab of this second harpoon, 
 the monster sullenly settled under water. The 
 battle was now well joined. What next ? 
 
 Suddenly and all unexpected, the whale came 
 up again like a submarine boat. He bumped his 
 back against the blades of the first mate s oars, 
 His shiny black hump stood fully a foot out of 
 water. The men could, feel the damp heat of his 
 spout. We could hear the sound of it. 
 
 This time old Blubber had gore in his eye. He 
 was in for carnage and calamity and consternation. 
 He lifted his huge square nose ten feet into the 
 air, and dropping his long under-jaw, deliberately 
 calculated his distance. Then with a hideous 
 swing of his whole appalling mass, he veered 
 round and took that whale-boat into his mouth. 
 His ivory teeth smashed through the cedar clinker- 
 work. The boat went to pieces like an egg-shell. 
 
 The mate s crew flung themselves headlong into 
 the water, and escaped by the skin of their teeth. 
 
174 "WHALES HAS FEELIN S." 
 
 Now the whale turned suddenly about. His 
 rage redoubled. He would have blood or die for 
 it. Making for the third officer s boat, he threw 
 his cruel jaw across it, turning it bottom-up and 
 staving it in. Again, as by a miracle, every man 
 escaped unhurt. 
 
 A pretty situation ! There were now two boats 
 crews floundering and sputtering in the water, 
 while the whale was lashing the waves into froth 
 with his flukes and sending the suds flying in 
 every direction. 
 
 With the one remaining boat, I succeeded in 
 picking up the swimmers, and in ferrying them 
 away to the ship. Fortunately we had not far to 
 travel. 
 
 How beautiful the Clara Bell looked as the 
 boat came round so that I faced her again ! Never 
 had I thought her graceful, half-clipper lines such 
 an exquisitely perfect model. Never had winged- 
 dragon figure-head impressed me as such a con- 
 sumate triumph of the wood-carver s art. Never 
 had the two white streaks along her side from 
 stem to stern seemed such a splendid decoration. 
 Never, in all the days I had sailed in her, had she 
 looked the white-robed angel-guardian she did 
 now. She stood with her main-yard hauled aback. 
 She nodded and dipped, and rose jauntily on the 
 
"WHALES HAS FEELIN s." 175 
 
 ocean swell. She was the joyfullest ship on all 
 the seas. We were going back to her 
 
 " Oh, ain t I all-fired glad we got done with that 
 wild-eyed monster ?" The speaker was dripping 
 with brine. " I calc lated I was clean daown- 
 swallered like old Jonah all-fired sure I were ! " 
 
 " Maybe I ain t glad, too ! oh, maybe not ! I 
 could look way down in the dratted brute s dratted 
 big gizzards. Deep ? Maybe not. Oh, no. Felt 
 like I was dangled over the drattedest deep pit in 
 the whole dratted world." 
 
 "I wouldn t touch that there man-eater with 
 the far-end of a spare yard not for money ;" 
 said a third, squeezing the salt-water out of his 
 beard, "no, not for money. I tell you, mess 
 mates, it s homicide an man-slaughter, an bloody 
 murder with malice aforethought to take an 
 dump two boats crews down the gullet o that 
 pesky man-eater, I tell you ! " 
 
 But think not, gentle reader, that these words 
 were spoken in anything graver than jest. 
 
 That this whale was a tough one, I have no 
 inclination to deny not the slightest. I followed 
 the sea forty-one years, I was captain of a ship 
 twenty-eight years, I have sailed more than a 
 million miles, and I have had a hand in the taking 
 of about twelve thousand barrels of oil ; but this 
 
176 "WHALES HAS FEELIN S." 
 
 fighting leviathan off Fort Dauphin was one of 
 the fiercest bits of blubber I ever raised out of the 
 ocean. Yet neither I nor my men had any 
 thought of surrender. We had already wasted 
 two boats on him and we meant to be paid for the 
 outlay. We insisted upon exacting a war indemity, 
 payable in sperm oil a hundred or a hundred 
 and twenty barrels the more the merrier ! 
 
 We clambered up the ship s side and over the 
 rail. From the deck we could get a startling 
 view of the enemy. The infuriated beast lay 
 wounded, only a short distance from the ship, 
 thrashing around amongst the floating debris 
 oars, paddles, lanterns, and water-kegs to say 
 nothing of what remained of our two boats, the 
 one a stoven wreck, the other smashed to 
 splinters. It would have turned a landsman cold 
 and stiff with horror. Nor am I certain that all 
 our crew were anxious to renew the battle. 
 
 Be that as it may, we immediately got down 
 two new spare boats from the skids overhead. 
 We made them ready for a desperate encounter 
 as we were going into the face of death. We 
 meant to have the chances in our favor. The 
 boats must be made as light as possible, so as to 
 be able to dart away in an instant, if necessary, 
 when the whale showed fight again. To this end, 
 
CLEANING UP AND REPAIRING. 
 
" WHALES HAS FEELIN s." 177 
 
 we hastily prepared the most severely abridged 
 outfit not an inch of line, and not a single piece 
 of craft beyond a gun and a bomb-lance in the 
 mate s boat and two hand-lances in mine. We 
 manned the boats with strong crews. The mate 
 took the second mate along with him, and I took 
 the third mate. We lowered the boats and sped 
 away toward our prey. 
 
 How bright, how amber-hued, the southern 
 sunlight, as it fell languorous and beautiful upon 
 the ocean billows ! How buoyant the dance of our 
 hurrying boats ! How impressive the swoop and 
 the soaring of the white gulls and albatrosses ! 
 And yet, I dare say, not one of us responded to 
 the fine romanticism of nature we were bent 
 upon too desperate an errand. There may be a 
 perennially fascinating charm in whaling life when 
 viewed from afar, but there are times when the 
 business assumes a grim ugliness at close range. 
 The poetry of the sea has always been written by 
 landsmen. It always will be. 
 
 Charm assuredly there had been in the suspense 
 and expectant anxiety preceeding this desperate 
 fight charm enough, when its horrors were only 
 a possibility ; but now, when the mystery was 
 pierced, the terrors become hideous facts, and the 
 nature of the foe fully known, the fun was gone 
 
 12 
 
178 "WHALES HAS FEELIN S." 
 
 altogether. When a fighting whale has chewed 
 up two of your boats and beaten you roundly in 
 his first pitched battle, it is a little unpleasant to 
 go at him again. 
 
 Our blood ran high, as we approached the 
 infuriated monster. His spout stood up as tall as 
 ever. He had been no whit enfeebled by his 
 tremendous exertions. Two harpoons stuck out 
 of his back. His flukes swung in air with deadly 
 force and rapidity. 
 
 The mate went to leeward of him and fired a 
 bomb-lance into him, but missed his vitals. 
 
 Instantly the wounded creature turned about, 
 heaved his head way out of water, opened his 
 cavernous mouth, and made a frightful lunge for 
 the mate s boat. I was just in time. I stood in 
 the bow of my boat, hardly able to wait long 
 enough to choose the right spot for the stab. I 
 was mad with excitement. I plunged the long 
 lance deep into the whale s vitals, and the blood 
 came belching out of his spout-hole rich and red 
 and warm, and after a few moments our victim 
 turned up dead and in a few moments more we 
 had him in the fluke chains along side the Clara 
 Bell. 
 
 Deafening indeed were the cheers from the 
 ship s deck when we had won that desperate 
 
"WHALES HAS FEELIN S." 179 
 
 fight; warm was the hand-grip of mess-mates as 
 we climbed aboard ; broad and bland the smile on 
 every sun-browned face ! We were all alive. We 
 were all unhurt. We had killed the whale. 
 
 The inevitable well-worn joke now went the 
 rounds. " Better have paid your wash-woman ! " 
 
 " You needn t talk, Jack ; you re as wet as a 
 draownded shark." 
 
 " Don t care if I be. Ain t no gearin tween 
 wash-tubs an whale-boats. Who said there was ? " 
 
 " You did, you slushy hypocritter, you. Ef 
 taint so, then what d you say I cheated my 
 wash-woman for, jest on accaount o me bein in a 
 stoven boat, you loony beach-comber ? " 
 
 " Clew down your jawin -tackle, sonny wax ! 
 Cheerily, oh!" 
 
 This sort of mock-malice stood for the best of 
 good-will. The more those men berated each 
 other the better they felt all around. 
 
 When they took the falls to the windlass and 
 manned the bars it was a joy to hear them sing. 
 Sailor-songs are not metrically faultless, any more 
 than Whitman s poems ; but they have the Jack 
 Tar spirit of the forecastle breathing all through 
 them, and hear and there a touch of easy humor. 
 This particular song ran, as I remember it, some 
 thing after this fashion : 
 
180 " WHALES HAS FEELIN s." 
 
 * O, Johnny was no sailor, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso.) 
 Still he shipped on a Yankee whaler, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso. ) 
 He could not do his duty, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso.) 
 And he tried to run away then, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso.) 
 They caught and brought him back again, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso.) 
 And he said he never would go again, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso.) 
 They put him pounding cable, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso.) 
 And found him very able, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso.) 
 He said he d run away no more, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso.) 
 He only waited to get on shore, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso.) 
 So when he put his feet on shore, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso.) 
 A-whaling he would go no more, 
 
 (Renso, boys, Renso.)" 
 
 What a whale that was ! He was the biggest 
 fellow I ever fell in with. He measured sixty- 
 four feet over all, and he had a sixteen-foot jaw. 
 His flukes stretched sixteen feet from tip to tip. 
 He made a hundred and thirty barrels of oil. 
 
 " Think what that old spouter must have 
 weighed," said the mate, when we had got him 
 coopered. " One hundred and thirty barrels at 
 eight pounds a gallon that makes let me 
 see that makes " (scratching of head, squirming 
 of eyebrows, smile of relief at last) " that makes 
 
"WHALES HAS FEELIN S." 181 
 
 two thousand, seven hundred and sixty pounds 
 of oil." 
 
 " Here, here ! " I said, " work that out on 
 paper, Mr. Wilson ; let s be accurate. I d really 
 like to get at the facts." 
 
 So Mr. Dorman figured it out in unimpeachable 
 black and white. He was right. Thirty-two 
 thousand, seven hundred and sixty pounds of 
 oil! 
 
 " Now, Cap n Bobbins," he continued, " you ll 
 grant it s within limits to say, one-third oil, two- 
 thirds waste?" 
 
 " Yes, a fair estimate ; nobody can dispute 
 that." 
 
THE GAM. 
 
 " I d ruther gam for fifteen minutes than slush the mast for fifteen weeks." 
 
 Rubaiyat of Salthorse Dooley. 
 
 "WHAT did you say your old man s name was ? " 
 
 " Bobbins, shipmates, an* as thorough a seaman 
 as ever trod the quarter-deck." 
 
 "Strict?" 
 
 "Yes an no. You don t feel like you was 
 being governed, an yit ev ry man aboard done 
 what he said, ev ry time. They ain t no half- 
 laughs an sailor s grins about him. He s straight 
 up an down, like a yard o pump water ! " 
 
 " A jolly wag, too ! " broke in a third heavy 
 voice. " You ought to seen him play it on them 
 full-rig Mohammedans at Johanna. By George, 
 it was fun ! Worth a man s hull advance pay! " 
 
 Two bells ! One o clock in the morning ! And 
 the ships were gamming still. The two captains 
 were holding high converse in the Clara Bell s 
 cabin, and until the visiting master saw fit to 
 return to his vessel, the visiting watch from the 
 stranger made merry in the Clara Bell s fore 
 castle. It was a delight to see new faces. It was 
 a rare treat to hear new voices. It was a fine, 
 novel pleasure to match yarns all round. 
 
THE GAM. 183 
 
 The men sat on the stout sea-chests along the 
 sides of that semi-circular room in the whale-ship s 
 bow. There were eighteen men in all ; nine 
 were hosts, nine were guests. Light streamed 
 down upon them from greasy lamps hung up 
 on the bitts. The air was dim with the smoke 
 of cheap tobacco. 
 
 Gamming is distinctly a whaleman s pastime. 
 Merchant ships will pass each other in mid-ocean 
 without a sign of recognition, steam-craft will go 
 by with a snobbish air that almost approaches 
 hostility, but whale-ships, when they meet, are 
 friendlier. They will heave to, after the day s 
 cruising is over and there is no longer any chance 
 of raising whales, and the captain s watch of one 
 ship will entertain the captain s watch of the other 
 ship. Similarly, the two chief mates watches 
 come together. This is called " gamming." 
 
 On that particular occasion the Clara Bell s 
 forecastle had been a hilarious roistering place 
 since seven in the evening. There had been 
 songs and cards and smoke ; and smoke and 
 cards and songs. There had been long-spun, 
 hair-lifting narratives of whaling adventures. 
 There had also been news from home some 
 of it a year old, but still very startling ; and some 
 of it six months new, every word an eye-opener. 
 
184 THE GAM. 
 
 And now they had taken to telling land-yarns and 
 stories of recent ports. Plainly, the gam was 
 about gammed out. 
 
 " Well, chummy, what about Johanna ? 
 
 "Dy e know the place?" 
 
 " Know it ? Guess I do. Here s my tarry 
 flipper on it ! Know Johanny, do I ? I knowed 
 Johanny fore I d learnt my three L s. It s got 
 high hills round it, an you can see em forty mile 
 out to sea, ain t I right ? An them white stone 
 houses in the town they ain t no taller, b gosh, 
 than a whaleship s hurricane house. Ain t that 
 so, messmate ? An them copper-colored natives, 
 an their gaff-tops l turbans, an their white gowns 
 as if they was goin to be buried at sea, an the 
 beetle-nut they chews that gits their teeth as 
 black as tar an gits the deck as red as blood, 
 b gosh, so nothin short o the prayer-books 11 
 take it off ag in, don t I remember em ? Who 
 says I ain t been to Johanny ? " 
 
 But the third voice, who seemed to think him 
 self particularly predestined and foreordained to 
 man the pumps and keep the stories flowing, 
 urged again, " What about the old man and the 
 natives ? Tell us, chummy. " 
 
 So " Bilge " Dennett took his pipe out of his 
 broad mouth, and tapping the bowl gently against 
 
THE GAM. 185 
 
 the sea-chest, dumped the ashes on the forecastle 
 floor. 
 
 " Well, boys," he said, looking out craftily from 
 under his ragged red eye-brows and lifting an 
 awkward forefinger in a jerky gesture, as if to 
 say, " Keep your weather eye open ; she s com 
 ing!" "Well, boys; you know how them 
 sogerin Moslems hates pork, an pork-grease, an 
 any sort o grease. Worse n Sheenies, ain t they ? 
 
 " Well, the old man, he comes it on em mighty 
 ship-shape. He d clap a lump o butter in the 
 palm o his flipper just fore he come up on deck 
 in the morin ; an pretty soon a brown Ay-rab 
 would sail up to him to talk tradin an that like ; 
 an when them two spliced hands it was worse n 
 whales an killers. 
 
 " Then, by the bloody wars, they was a 
 tornado ! That Moslem would be brought up all 
 standin , an he d jump back an pull his sheath- 
 knife out o his belt and strike a figger like a 
 villian in a play, an sing out, If you wa n t my 
 friend, I d kill you in a minute ! You ought to 
 see it, lads. 
 
 " Then the old man would sing out for the 
 cabin-boy to turn to an fetch a basin o water an 
 a clean towel, an when the Ay-rab had swabbed 
 his flipper he d feel chummy again and then them 
 
186 THE GAM. 
 
 two would love each other just like no thin 
 oncommon d happened." 
 
 An appreciative grin spread over the faces of 
 the listeners. 
 
 "Just wait till we put in at Johanna/ said 
 one ; " we ll butter them natives ; we ll make 
 buttered rolls of the whole crew of em ; flowed 
 if we wont." 
 
 Then Bilge resumed. 
 
 " That ain t the only thing the old man done at 
 Johanna, bless his old soul. One day he goes on 
 shore an cruises round with a Moslem merchant 
 intendin to go to the brown man s house. All on 
 a sudden a bell rings out from a big white mosque, 
 an down drops the brown man on his knees like 
 he was shot down killick ! an he clapped his 
 head three times on the ground an had over a 
 long pious chanty in Ay-rab lingo, an then up he 
 got ag in an looked round for the old man. But 
 the old man, bless his soul, he d forged ahead 
 while the brown man was. hove down, an so he 
 come up to the house first. Ha, ha ! 
 
 "Now you know how shy them Johanna 
 women be." 
 
 " Guess I do," broke in the Man Who Had 
 Been There Himself. " You bet I do ! You can 
 gamble on that, night an day, b gosh ! You cruise 
 
THE GAM. 187 
 
 around them crooked streets, looking an looking 
 an looking but b gosh you don t raise a gal 1 
 Them women gits from house to house by goin 
 aloft an sneaking along them flat roofs, b gosh ! 
 An a chap don t see his Nancy till they re spliced 
 in the mosque by some sky-pilot or Holy Joe or 
 other, or whatever them Ay-rabs calls him ! " 
 
 " Aye-aye, messmate, we all know you ve been 
 there, but Bilge Dennett is holding the yarn. 
 You ain t. Go on, Bilgy ! What did the old man 
 do when he dropped his mud-hook in the Ay-rab s 
 shanty ? " The speaker was one of the visiting 
 watch. The Man Who Had Been There Himself 
 subsided. 
 
 " Well," Bilgy resumed, relieved at being no 
 longer interrupted, " taint so much what he done 
 inside as what he never done at all when he first 
 cume up to the door. They s a kind o harbor 
 law to Johanna it says you must give three loud 
 raps on the door an a good waitin spell tween 
 the raps so s to let the women folks know a man s 
 a-comin an put for shelter. That s the rule o 
 the road an there s the devil to pay if you don t 
 sail by it. 
 
 "Well, the old man, bless his jolly toplights, 
 he just give the door one good thump an then in 
 he forged all ataunto. 
 
188 THE GAM. 
 
 " There in the cabin I mean, there in the 
 parlor, was the Ay-rab s wife and daughter, 
 with not more n half their standin riggin on, 
 naked from their waists up ! Heavens, wa n t they 
 gallied ! They jumped for safety like a brace o 
 jack-rabbits. 
 
 " Then that Ay-rab begun cussin worse n forty 
 pirates on a raft ! Thunder an lightnin , but 
 didn t he give it to the old man ! but the old 
 man just keeps a talkin business so many 
 fathom o cotton cloth for so many live hogs, so 
 many pounds o gunpowder for so many cords o 
 wood, an so on an so on till at last the brown 
 man cools off as cool as a cask o sperm oil all fit 
 to be coopered. 
 
 " An Men s an fellow cit zens, as they say in 
 town-meetin back in old Vermont, that s how I 
 have the honor (a-hem) to be sailin under the 
 only live Yankee that ever saw a woman in 
 Johanna." 
 
 There was an evident demand for Johanna 
 stories. The Clara Bell s men liked to hear the 
 captain s prowess enlarged upon. The strangers 
 liked to learn all they could about Johanna so as 
 not to be altogether green when they came into 
 port, and every Jack Tar of them was vowing in 
 his innermost heart of hearts and swearing by all 
 
THE GAM. 189 
 
 that s ship-shape that he d make those Arabs dance 
 a break-down and teach them just a few new steps 
 into the bargain. 
 
 " Come, Bilgy, my jolly sea-dog, tell em about 
 the coffee. That ll start their stanchions ! " 
 
 " Yes, Bilgy, tell em how the steward hazed 
 them Ay-rab waisters ! " 
 
 " Aye-aye, Bilgy, clew up your jawin tackle, 
 an you ll make these here jolly strangers grin 
 like so many right whales ! " 
 
 " Come, tumble up, my lively hearty, out with 
 the twister ! " 
 
 " On one condition an one only/ said Bilge 
 Dennett, " an that condition is this, mess-mates : 
 I ll spin the yarn, but only after that there man- 
 o -war s-man s sung us another rare old chanty. 
 So, Four-decker, give us a broadside ! Can t you 
 bellow the Commodore , or have you clean forgot 
 it, so long since you was a blue-jacket ? " 
 
 " The Commodore give us the Commo 
 dore, " the sailors shouted, "give us the Commo 
 dore , or we ll scuttle your old hulk and send you 
 plumb to Jimmy Squarefoot." 
 
 The blue-jacket or, as some would say, the 
 jolly was proud of his former service in the 
 navy, so proud, in fact, that he thought he had 
 stepped down a ratline or two in reducing himself 
 
190 THE GAM. 
 
 to a mere mercenary blubber-hunter. He had 
 been waiting all the evening for somebody to call 
 for a line-of-battle-ship yarn, but this invitation to 
 sing was the nearest approach to such solicitation. 
 He therefore jumped at the chance. He assumed 
 for the moment an air of aggrieved timidity, but 
 when the crowd insisted, he reluctantly, but firmly, 
 submitted. 
 
 Four-decker was a stout, deep-chested, beef- 
 laden seaman with a cavernous mouth and a 
 ponderous bass voice. He sang with the gusto of 
 a music-hall soloist and an occasional tragic gesture 
 enlivened the ballad : 
 
 " It was on a dark and stormy night, 
 The wind nor west did blow; 
 And from the ship s high, lofty bows, 
 That were pitching to and fro, 
 Could be heard loud, rattling peals of thunder, 
 And fierce, wild lightnings fly. 
 Hail, rain and sleet and thunders meet, 
 And dismal was the sky. 
 
 " Twas early on next morning 
 
 Our brave commander said 
 Whoever has the lookout, go up to the mast-head, 
 
 And keep a good lookout, my boy, 
 
 And try what you can see ! 
 
 And he soon cried out from the mast-head, 
 * Two large ships under our lee ! 
 
 " Now one was off our quarter, 
 The other off our cat-head. 
 We cleared away for action, 
 As our brave commander said. 
 
191 
 
 THE GAM. 
 
 The job being done, it counted one, 
 And lasted from twelve till four, 
 And what was fearful to relate, 
 We sank the French Commodore ! 
 
 1 Now five sailors we picked up were Frenchmen, 
 And six were from haughty Spain. 
 We picked them up from off the wreck, 
 That had floated from the main. 
 Soon we ll send them to proud France, 
 Where they had been before, 
 To tell the proud French admiral 
 We sank his Commodore." 
 
 The singer wound up his song with a lusty 
 cadenza that made the forecastle fairly shiver 
 with its vibrant, tragic resonance. It was easy 
 to see that Four-decker considered himself entirely 
 responsible for the sinking of the Commodore. 
 You would have thought it his habit, had you 
 heard him sing, to engage a foreign corvette or 
 sloop-of-war every ten or fifteen minutes. 
 
 There was a hearty round of applause, much 
 kicking of heels against sea-chests and a prodi 
 gious clapping of hardened hands, but no verbal 
 suggestion of an encore. A whaleman never dips 
 his colors to man-of-war service. 
 
 It was a trying moment, but Four-decker was 
 quick to see the dignified way of escape out of 
 his embarrassment. 
 
 "Now, Bilge," he said, with an assumption of 
 fervent enthusiasm, "it s your trick at the wheel!" 
 
192 THE GAM. 
 
 " Yes, Bilge/ shouted the Social Pump, " tell 
 em about that much-good coffee." 
 
 " Well, boys," Bilge Dennet resumed, " we get 
 bully good coffee aboard o this here barkie, an 
 you can bet your spare yards on that. An 
 when them Ay-rabs come on board to trade, 
 the steward, bless his soul, he d lure the whole 
 school of em into the cabin an treat em to hot 
 coffee all round. An that jolly flunky knows 
 how to mix the drink so it ll lift your hair like 
 a flaw o wind. It s the real thing none o 
 your water-bewitched, I tell you ! " 
 
 " Kind o lives up to the rule they have in Ryo 
 Janeero, I reckon," added the Experienced Man, 
 parenthetically. "Jolly good rule, too, b gosh!" 
 
 " What s that ? " queried Bilge Dennett. 
 
 " Why, them yellow-belly Portugees say, Cof 
 fee, to be Al, must be black as night, strong as 
 death, an hot as hell! that s the rule, b gosh, 
 an you can bet your rudder them Dagoes lives up 
 to it ! " 
 
 " Ay aye," said Bilge. " that s the chart our 
 flunky sails by, bless his tarry soul, an he never 
 let s the doctor touch the mixture when he wants 
 to come out extra man-o -war-fashion. An as I 
 was sayin , mess-mates, them turban Ay-rabs took 
 to it like whales take to water. 
 
THE GAM. 193 
 
 " Much good, much good ! they d say an* 
 hold out their cups for more. 
 
 " Well, this sort o thing made the steward 
 mighty popular, / tell you ; he could a been 
 king o the island any time he d say the word ; 
 but that everlastin coffee cookin got to be a, 
 pesky nuisance, an at last the flunky hit on a 
 trick to chop it off square. 
 
 " So one day he hailed them traders an* says to 
 em, Come down in the cabin, gents, an splice 
 the main-brace with a cup of Al coffee ! 
 
 " So down they climbs, every brown Alladin s 
 son of em, an that cabin was as full of Ay-rabs 
 as the hold was full of casks. An then the flunky 
 serves out that coffee, made a-purpose, bless his 
 spankin soul, black an hot an strong till it 
 lifted their turbans for em boys, an made em 
 wiggle in their chairs. Much good, much good, 
 much good ! they yelled, an the flunkey kep 
 a-pourin an a-pourin till he d emptied the whole 
 blessed pot. 
 
 " Well, gents , he says, did you ever s waller 
 such coffee, in all your heathen born days ? Come, 
 gents, did you ? an them Ay-rabs says, 4 No, 
 most honorable, we never done it. 
 
 " An then, boys, what do you think ? That 
 flunky runs a fork down in the coffee pot, and 
 
194 THE GAM. 
 
 claws round in them black grounds, an fishes out 
 a long bit o salt pork rind, an holds it up front 
 o their crazy top-lights. 
 
 " Then you ought to seen the hurricane. That 
 shiny pork knocked them Ay rabs alow an aloft. 
 They was hit with the horrors. Their head-lights 
 stuck out so you could hang your hat on em. 
 They turned from brown to white. 
 
 " An afore you could sing the first line of 
 * Jack Robinson the whole school of em tumbled 
 up like the watch below when all hands is called. 
 Out them Ay-rabs bounced oh, boys, it was 
 worth a bottle o close-reef to see em! They 
 scudded for the ship s side like a dozen white 
 yachts in a gale, and there they tickled their hot- 
 copper gullets with their finger-ends so as to git 
 clear o that < much good coffee ! An mateys, 
 that ended the coffee nuisance for good an all, / 
 tell you." 
 
 No sooner was the story finished than there was 
 a prodigious banging on the forecastle scuttle, 
 followed by a sharp call of command. The 
 stranger crew were summoned on deck to return 
 to their ship, and the gam was over. 
 
 I have ever since pitied the Moslems of Johanna 
 for the treatment they must have got from the 
 whalemen who were so elaborately coached, that 
 night, in the Clara Bell s forecastle. 
 
jH 
 
 NEW BEDFORD \\IIAHF OK TO-DAY. 
 
AUGUSTINE BAY. 
 
 NOT a story this time. Instead, a string of 
 stories. For things come about at sea, as upon 
 land, without much reference to literary values. 
 They simply occur. Sometimes they are dramatic ; 
 oftener not. Sometimes they steer towards a 
 climax; oftener they don t. 
 
 So this is a plain account of what happened 
 an account of what happened to me and my crew 
 and my ship when the lot of us called at Augus 
 tine Bay. 
 
 The Clara Bell had been leaking. It was a 
 trifle, said I at first ; but now it got worse. The 
 pumps were at it all the while, not working hard, 
 but working. Clearly, it was time to worry. 
 
 Searching the damp, dark hold, we made out at 
 last the treacherous spot. There, against the 
 stern-post, about two feet below the water-line, we 
 found the sea-brine oozing in. 
 
 I should have called it tough luck, this wretched 
 obstacle to our voyage, had we not been every 
 man Jack of us ready to welcome such inter 
 ruption. For our cruise was up. Port was the 
 place for us, so we put away. 
 
 Out of the sea rose the green, luxuriantly 
 wooded Madagascan coast, within the coast a 
 
196 AUGUSTINE BAY. 
 
 lovely harbor, the harbor of Augustine Bay. 
 Entering there, we dropped our mudhook off 
 Tent Rock. Very well named, I call that rock, 
 for it is shaped like a tent and as white as new 
 canvas. It is just a mile from the shore. 
 
 I can t say how it is now, but in those old days 
 whoever bethought him to land at Augustine Bay 
 must first make terms with the savages. I knew 
 that the fuzzy fellows would soon come off to treat 
 with us. Accordingly I cleared for action. For 
 savages are thieves, the whole world over, and 
 whatever may be said in favor of valor, dis 
 cretion is the better part of holding your own. 
 Every dispensable article went below rope, 
 spare belay ing-pins, buckets, craft lest those 
 rogues should make off with them. 
 
 Now I confess to a weakness for dogs, particu 
 larly for big Newfoundland dogs, and most 
 particularly for my beloved black Rover. I was 
 bound that no sooty Madagascan should capture 
 that faithful friend. I therefore shut Rover up. 
 I tucked him into my room off the cabin and left 
 him there for safe keeping. 
 
 And in that I builded better than I knew. 
 
 Hardly had I got upon deck again when the 
 canoes, deeply laden with their savage freight, 
 came splashing for us. Then there was a wild 
 
AUGUSTINE BAY. 197 
 
 / 
 
 scramble up the ship s side. The natives climbed 
 up over the bulwarks like ants out of a broken 
 hill. They were terrible fellows. They had grass 
 mats around their loins. Some had arrayed them 
 selves in dirty flannel shirts. Their women wore 
 nondescript garments of cotton cloth, and had 
 their hair done up in little knots like nutmegs 
 and covered with grease. 
 
 We set to business directly. The chief and his 
 cabinet "big men," they say followed me 
 down into the cabin, where the pow-wow began. 
 I wanted to land and to recruit the Clara Bell 
 with wood and water. I wanted to buy that 
 privilege cheap. They, on their part, wanted 
 cotton cloth. They wanted all they could get 
 of it. And that s where we disagreed. 
 
 Whatever those fuzzies thought of my seaman 
 ship, they evidently held a very low estimate of 
 my diplomacy ; but in that they were mistaken. 
 For we had gammed with a ship from that very 
 port and I knew the ropes like any old sea-dog. 
 I knew just how much I ought to give, and just 
 where I ought to draw the line. The regulation 
 tariff was thirty yards to the chief and five 
 fathoms to each of his advisers. That I offered 
 and there I stuck. 
 
 But time was precious and I knew that, too. 
 
 T^rr T ha.fl twn trihps t,n flpnl wit,h_ 
 
198 
 
 AUGUSTINE BAY. 
 
 at Tent Rock could not give me leave to get 
 water at the head of the river. Another tribe 
 from that quarter would come along directly and 
 I must get rid of present company before that. 
 But how the rascals hung on ! They haggled 
 over prices hour after hour. They were like a 
 batch of Soloman Levis. Indeed, I believe they 
 were descended from the long-lost tribes of Israel. 
 
 I was pretty well driven to destraction, when 
 suddenly Rover burst the bonds of his imprison 
 ment. 
 
 Out he bounded into the cabin and then oh, 
 lands and seas, how those chumps did scoot ! 
 They had never seen a dog before ! They jumped 
 out of that cabin like electrified jack-rabbits. 
 Rover followed hard and the whole tribe, save 
 only the chief, made off over the ship s bows, 
 each one taking the cloth he had held at the 
 moment of Rover s appearance some content 
 with only a fathom, others counting themselves 
 lucky with a strip three yards long. 
 
 As for the chief, his knees were knocking 
 together and his eyes were starting from their 
 sockets. He made terms in a hurry. 
 
 But when the up-river folk came off, I had to 
 be generous. I wanted to tow our raft of casks a 
 long way up their river to get fresh water, and I 
 
AUGUSTINE BAY. 199 
 
 was aware that we should have to wait over night 
 before we could bring them back to the ship. We 
 must make fast friends with the natives or they 
 would steal the hoops off our casks and then, so 
 far as practical purposes went, there wouldn t be 
 any casks. 
 
 We made ourselves " solid " with both chiefs, 
 and according to agreement they left a native 
 detective on board to make sure we were not 
 troubled with thieving. Little good came of that, 
 however, for the detective was the worst thief of 
 the lot. That, please observe, is saying a great 
 deal. The gift for misappropriation is nowhere 
 more superbly developed than in Madagascar. 
 And their impudence, combined with their thiev 
 ing pity the mariner who must restrain himself 
 from bloodshed under such torment ! No sort of 
 sanctity is proof against their ravages. 
 
 One day a Yankee clipper came to anchor in 
 the harbor with the stars and stripes at her peak. 
 
 While the captain and his officers were at sup 
 per, the fuzzies hauled down Old Glory and made 
 off with it. The Tent Rock chief, so I have 
 heard, had it made up into a suit of clothes, and 
 was seen by a British crew, a few weeks later, 
 strutting about in it like a coal-tar Yankee Doodle. 
 But all that happened after we had left. 
 
200 AUGUSTINE BAY. 
 
 Often, while we lay in port, the up-river chief 
 and his dusky queen and their suite came off to 
 visit us. We counted that no serious affliction, 
 for in Madagascar you can entertain royalty on 
 a very slender outlay. We would put a huge 
 wash-tub on the quarter deck, pour two or three 
 pails of water into it, sweeten the water with a 
 quart of molasses, and add ten or a dozen pounds 
 of ship s biscuit. The royal cortege would squat 
 round the tub a guzzling, grinning, jabbering 
 ring of boobies thinking themselves lavishly 
 entertained. 
 
 Big fun we called that. But that was not our 
 only sport at Augustine Bay. In fact it was 
 as nothing beside our mischievous practice of 
 medicine. 
 
 One day a native came aboard clutching his 
 aching belly, and groaning in misery. I knew 
 what he wanted, and gave him a nip of New 
 England rum. Instantaneous cure ! 
 
 Next day, however, Mr. Fuzzy came back for 
 further treatment. His case was serious. He 
 said he had been ill for a year. One dose was 
 not enough to eradicate a chronic disorder. Of 
 course not, who ever said it was ? 
 
 I therefore turned my patient over to the mate, 
 who saw a chance to make something out of the 
 
AUGUSTINE BAY. 201 
 
 Fuzzy s weakness. The two hit on a capital 
 agreement the Fuzzy to bring a bucket of 
 beans on board every day, the mate to "cure" 
 the Fuzzy. 
 
 Now that mate of mine had ideas of his own, 
 and this is the series of doses he gave that poor 
 heathen : 
 
 First day, half-glass of rum and four table- 
 spoonfuls castor oil. 
 
 Second day, hot-drops, sugar and water. 
 
 Third-day, vinegar and pepper-sauce. 
 
 Fourth day, molasses and mustard. 
 
 Fifth day, glass of brandy with red pepper. 
 
 Sixth day, cayenne pepper and cheese. 
 
 Seventh day onions, mustard and Chili sauce. 
 
 Eighth day, rum and castor oil, same as 
 first day. 
 
 Ninth day arnica, paregoric and mustard, 
 equal parts. 
 
 Tenth day, straight whiskey. 
 
 With what result? The very best, the very 
 best result in the world. The black beggar stuck 
 it out bravely, patient to the bitter end. He 
 would take his medicine with utter resignation. 
 He would twist his coarse face into hideous 
 grimaces. He would go away feeling as if he had 
 swallowed a bonfire. But when the time expired 
 
202 AUGUSTINE BAY. 
 
 he was thoroughly cured. As is commonly the 
 ease, he got well in spite of his medicine ! 
 
 Of course we had the usual port routine to 
 follow up. Beside water and wood, we laid in a 
 supply of beans much like Lima beans, and a 
 lot of beef and mutton. The live beef was a sight. 
 The bullocks were large and fat, w r ith humps on 
 their fore-shoulders. Splendid fellows they were, 
 sleek as silk, the finest I ever saw ! And the 
 prices ! you could buy them for an old flint 
 lock musket and a few brass-headed tacks. (Why 
 the tacks ? you ask. For ornament. The savages 
 pound them into the wooden parts of their guns.) 
 We would purchase those bullocks on the shore 
 and then we would swim them off to the ship 
 and hoist them in by their long horns. 
 
 Then, too, there was the matter of the leak. 
 That had to be attended to immediately. We 
 took the cargo out of the after part of the ship to 
 lighten her, and then we found the cause of the 
 trouble. 
 
 There are no accidents in the world never 
 were never will be. Everything has its cause, 
 and that particular thing, the leak, had this 
 cause the copper bottom had not been securely 
 soldered about the stern-post. Through the tiny 
 water-course thus left exposed, the worms had got 
 
AUGUSTINE BAY. 203 
 
 in puny creatures, so small you could hardly 
 see them with the naked eye, yet they had bored 
 those solid white-oak planks into a sieve like a 
 honey-comb. A blow from a hammer on the 
 worm-eaten parts would crush the wood in like an 
 egg shell. There was a weak spot, easily repaired, 
 that might have sent us to Davy Jones. 
 
 Before we left Augustine Bay, a fine clipper 
 swept up the harbor and anchored near us, the 
 French tri-color at her peak. According to the 
 best accounts, she had come into port to procure 
 a cargo of laborers. Innocent word enough, 
 laborers ! Ah, but she would take them to the 
 island of Bourbon. There they would be paid 
 twelve dollars a month for seven years service. 
 
 And what of that ? Just this : they would 
 never be able to buy their way out of bondage. 
 The seven years up, they would all be in debt and 
 would have to remain as slaves, powerless even to 
 return home. It was slavery in disguise. 
 
 Out of the remote interior of the island came 
 that sombre procession. A slave trader had them 
 in leash. He herded them all the way to the 
 shore, and he himself brought them, load after 
 load, aboard the French ship. Once on deck the 
 poor creatures were examined by a sort of veteri 
 nary, who punched their breasts, pinched their 
 
204 
 
 AUGUSTINE BAT. 
 
 limbs and eyed their teeth as if he were apprais 
 ing so much horseflesh. Oh, it was a horrid sight ! 
 And I saw it done. 
 
 In the midst of the operation a man-of-war, 
 cruising for slavers, entered the harbor. A boat 
 sped swiftly across the water, and the officers 
 boarded the Frenchman. But nothing could be 
 contrived to save the poor wretches. The French 
 man s papers were flawless. Dastardly though 
 the fact, it was cloaked in a legal fiction. No one 
 had a right to interfere. 
 
 The process of examination went steadily 
 forward. The young and strong were taken. 
 The old and decrepit were rejected. Lucky, 
 indeed, were the physically unfit. 
 
 When our repairs were done and all supplies 
 got in and stowed down, we took our mudhook 
 and put to sea, beating out of Augustine Bay in 
 the early afternoon. 
 
 Down into the southern sea sank those pleasant 
 shores, slowly and almost reluctantly, but bold 
 against the far horizon we could still see the 
 ugly form of the slaver, swift upon her way 
 toward Bourbon. 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 " God save thee, Ancient Mariner, 
 
 From the fiends that plague thee thus ! 
 Why looks thou so ? With my cross-bow 
 I shot the Albatross." 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 " Cap n Robbins, I beg you, don t ! " 
 
 "Don t?" 
 
 "Don t kill the albatross." 
 
 " And, pray, why shouldn t I ? " 
 
 " Because," said the mate of the Thomas Pope y 
 " it s well known, sir, that terrible consequences 
 follow the murder of one of those white birds. I 
 say murder for I can tell you, sir, it s nothing 
 less. Haven t you heard that the souls of dead 
 bo s ns and sailors go soaring about in these 
 latitudes in the form of albatrosses ? " 
 
 " Why, no, I answered, " You see I never 
 lived in the fo c s le, Mr. Russell. My first voyage 
 I shipped as cabin-boy, and my second voyage I 
 went as third mate in the old Balaena. So, you 
 see, I never got much acquainted with the fo c s le 
 superstitions." 
 
 "What!" Russell exclaimed, "has no one 
 ever told you how dangerous it is to kill an 
 albatross ? " 
 
206 
 
 THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 Preparations for albatross-catching were already 
 going bravely forward in the waist. The sailors 
 were busy rigging a long, stout fish-line with a 
 big cod-hook at the end. They were getting a 
 liberal slice of salt-pork to bait the hook. That 
 never fails. 
 
 " Well," said my mate, " I notice that my 
 opinions don t weigh any too heavy with you; 
 but tell me, sir, have you ever killed an albatross 
 before?" 
 
 " Lots of them. Last time I was rounding the 
 Cape of Good Hope I killed half-a-dozen. Why, 
 if I m not mistaken, it was only a few searmiles 
 from where we are just now." 
 
 "And no unpleasant consequence followed ? " 
 
 " Oh, well, to be frank with you, I did come 
 near losing rny ship within a few days after that." 
 
 " See," said Russell, " see how that bird hovers 
 over the main-mast truck ! The creature must 
 measure at least ten feet across those wings! 
 And think of it, sir, the albatross has followed 
 us for three days now or is it four ? But 
 pardon the interruption what was that about 
 all but losing your ship ? " 
 
 " Why, it was on one of my voyages homeward 
 from the Indian Ocean. We were lying to in a 
 gale. And all of a sudden the wind changed and 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 207 
 
 brought us into the trough of the sea, so that we 
 were forced to wear ship to keep our decks from 
 being swept of everything and losing our boats. 
 Meet her when she shakes/ the mate shouted, 
 6 full for stays ! But when the wheel was put 
 up, and the ship had gathered headway, a great, 
 rolling swell caught her bodily, and turned her 
 over on her beam-ends. There we lay, apparently 
 undecided which way to go, trucks up or keel up. 
 I lived twenty years in twenty seconds ! Then 
 the awful moments of suspense went by. The 
 ship righted herself angrily mad as a whale 
 in his flurry and we came round breasting 
 the sea!" 
 
 " A marvellous escape ! " Russell observed, with 
 the air of a mathematician about to say Q. E. D. 
 
 " Yes, a marvellous escape ! Many a good 
 stanch hooker has gone to Davy Jones just that 
 way. I was lucky to have a long-legged ship. 
 If she had been one of those round-ribbed, flat- 
 bottomed butter-boxes they build by the mile 
 down in Maine and saw off any length you 
 order, we should surely have turned turtle and 
 never been heard from again ! " 
 
 " Aha ! " said Russell, with a twinkle of triumph 
 in his little black eyes, " Seems to me your own 
 experience confirms the truth of my convictions ! " 
 
208 THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 "0, not at all ! " I answered. "If my logic 
 serves me well, all it proves is that when you get 
 into a mighty bad scrape you get out of it unhurt. 
 If killing albatrosses has anything to do with that, 
 why, where s the harm of killing them ? It 
 strikes me, Mr. Russell, we d better take special 
 pains to kill a few birds, you and I, (or murder, 
 them, if you prefer), as a precautionary measure ! 
 At any rate, we ll have that big bird yonder, I 
 reckon, the very next swoop he makes. These 
 bo s ns ghosts of yours don t show any very 
 dainty taste in the bait they snap at eh, Mr. 
 Russell?" 
 
 Russell was about to venture a reply, when 
 suddenly, just as I had predicted, the albatross 
 swooped down upon that irresistible bait of salt 
 pork. The hook took a cruel hold in the big 
 fowl s throat. The line was stretched taut. You 
 would have thought the bird would break his long 
 swan-neck, he struggled so madly to be free. 
 Four men held the line ; they hauled it in ; they 
 grappled with the albatross and they killed him. 
 
 The mate stood horrified. His hands were 
 thrust deep in the pockets of his blue round 
 about; they twitched nervously. His mouth 
 tightened at the corners and made deep wrinkles 
 in his yellow checks. He turned to me with a 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 209 
 
 look of outraged anxiety and spoke tremulously, 
 " Cap n Bobbins," he said, " we shall all be very 
 sorry for this very, very sorry, and that not 
 many days from now ! " 
 
 " As for the truth of that cheerful prophecy," 
 I answered, " it s more a matter of fact than of 
 opinion. Let us wait and see ! " pleasantly 
 enough I smiled as I spoke, but Russell s frown 
 grew only the gloomier. 
 
 The albatross found his way in time into the 
 cook s coppers and thence at dinner-hour, albeit a 
 trifle tardy, into the cabin. He was served in a 
 delicious sea-pie, though my wife, who was then 
 upon her first voyage, and by no means the tall- 
 water epicure she afterward became, pronounced 
 him decidedly strong and fishy. 
 
 I watched the mate closely, not a little curious 
 to see how he would behave. He was ashamed 
 not to take his portion of that double-decker pie 
 upon his plate, but I noticed that he contented 
 himself with nibbling the potatoes and onions that 
 went with the meat, while of the meat itself he 
 never tasted the tiniest morsel. His objections, 
 forsooth, were conscientious. He was not going 
 to incur the guilt of cannibalism. 
 
 " Russell," I said, " we were speaking of the 
 possible consequences of killing an albatross, you 
 
210 THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 remember, and I told you this morning that I had 
 only one experience to judge by. That is hardly 
 true. There was another occasion I ought to 
 have mentioned." 
 
 "And that was? " 
 
 " A most extraordinary occurence, Mr. Russell. 
 I was coming home from one of my merchant 
 voyages. The ship was nearing the Gulf Stream 
 on her course from Pernambuco. A heavy sou - 
 west gale was blowing, and the old girl was 
 running under close-reefed main - top - sail and 
 fore-sail. 
 
 "We entered the Gulf Stream about midnight. 
 The wind died out to a calm. Heavy, oily, black 
 clouds piled up in the nor -east and covered the 
 sky till it was dark as the ship s run. I thought 
 the wind would come from that direction and 
 strike the ship aback, so I called all hands to take 
 in main-top-s l and fore-s l. You know merchant 
 ships go with such stingy crews it leaves you 
 short-handed at a time like that. Consequently I 
 had to take the wheel. 
 
 " The men had got hold of the clew-lines and 
 buntxlines, and were about to start the sheets, 
 when there was a sudden flash in the sou -west 
 and a ball of blazing fire as big as a man s head 
 leaped out of the clouds. It dashed across the 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 211 
 
 sky. It made for our ship. It started at an angle 
 of forty-five degrees, and it modified its course 
 into a curving line like part of an ellipse. A 
 trail of fire followed it. It struck the main-top- 
 m st just above the cap on the head of the 
 main-m st and exploded with a report like that of 
 a rifle. The sparks flew into the belly of the 
 main-top-s l. The light blinded my eyes. 
 
 " As soon as I could see again, I looked for my 
 men. They had all tumbled out of sight. I 
 locked the wheel and went for ard. There I 
 found the crew lying on the deck in the ship s 
 waist senseless every man Jack of them. After 
 a few minutes they all came to but one. He was 
 a young Portuguese. We carried him down into 
 the cabin and rubbed him and dosed him and put 
 smelling-salts under his nose, and at last he 
 opened his eyes and said, Bono Dio, Cap, I don t 
 want see all-same- that again ! 
 
 u In the morning I examined the mast with the 
 utmost care, but I could find nowhere any mark 
 left by that flying ball of flame. The thing was 
 evidently a sort of St. Elmo s Fire ; but you 
 may imagine my horror when I found my crew 
 all unconscious. Heavens ! I thought for a 
 moment that I was the only live man left aboard 
 that ship ! " 
 
212 THE ALBATEOSS. 
 
 " Yes/ said Russell, " I have read of such 
 things, and I knew a man once who had seen one. 
 He called it a corposant or compresent, some 
 say ; but what puzzles me, Cap n Robbins, is to 
 see what sort of connection there is between a 
 ball of electric fire in the Gulf Stream and the 
 killing of an albatross. I never heard of albatrosses 
 in those latitudes, did you, sir ? " 
 
 "No, hardly," I answered, "but since you ve 
 begun to enlighten me, I am inclined to attribute 
 that occurrence to an albatross I had murdered * 
 three years before ! " 
 
 Russell munched his onions and potatoes in 
 silence. I hope he enjoyed them. The conversa 
 tion lapsed ; the meal was nearly done before it 
 revived again. 
 
 The next day, according to my log-book it 
 was the twentieth of November, back in fifty- 
 nine, we were struck by a furious gale, the 
 first real storm since the voyage began. Our 
 little bark scudded under close-reefed main-top 
 sail and fore-sail before a fierce sou west wind. 
 Albatross or no albatross, it was blowing great 
 guns. The ship labored frightfully. The green 
 hand at the helm would let her come to a little 
 now and then, and every time he did it, she 
 would take a sea in the waist with a noise like 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 213 
 
 thunder. I had to watch him as you watch a 
 madman. 
 
 At seven bells that morning, the steward had 
 got the racks on the table, and was putting our 
 breakfast in readiness. I was below at the 
 moment. The ship was pitching and heaving till 
 I thought she would jump the sticks out of her. 
 Suddenly she brought a tremendous roll to star 
 board. I shouted to the cabin-boy, " Look out for 
 the table ! " but the words were no more than 
 spoken when everything slid off on to the floor 
 with forty different kinds of jingles and crashes 
 all at once. My wife shrieked with terror ; she 
 thought we were wrecked ; she rushed from the 
 state-room in her night-gown, and just at that 
 moment a monstrous wave pooped the Thomas 
 Pope, and burst over the ship s port quarter. 
 Tons of salt water came pounding through the 
 sky-light into the after-cabin, and Mrs. Bobbins 
 arrived upon the scene at the one happy moment 
 when she would get the full benefit of it. That 
 sea-going wife of mine has no taste for immer 
 sion ; but on that memorable morning she could 
 not choose but submit. As I said at the time, 
 that big, cold billow baptized her for the 
 Indian Ocean. 
 
 I was glad, a few days later, that it had done 
 so, for after so tremendous an initiation she never 
 
214 THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 again suffered any fear. I think she regarded 
 herself as one who had endured the worst there 
 was to endure, and resolved not to be annoyed by 
 trifles thereafter. 
 
 We rounded the Cape, and then the weather 
 became more pleasant. We steered for the 
 Mozambique Channel, keeping the watch on deck 
 busy preparing craft and cutting-gear for whaling. 
 We might see whales at any time now. 
 
 Since that roaring gale off the Cape, the chief 
 mate had never mentioned the albatross. But I 
 could, nevertheless, see that his mind was not at 
 rest. He thought albatross, dreamed albatross, 
 and, as I thought, even looked albatross. When 
 the weather moderated and came off warm and 
 pleasant with favorable winds, I watched him 
 with a curious interest. A last I broached the 
 matter myself. 
 
 " Mr. Russell," I said, " it strikes me we re 
 going to come off alive after all, spite of that 
 cannibal pot-pie ! " 
 
 " I tell you what, Cap n Bobbins," he answered, 
 unmistakably nettled, " we re not home yet ! 
 No, sir, not by a long sea mile ! " 
 
 No sooner had he spoken those ominous words 
 than I observed a huge rolling swell, miles in 
 extent, and straight as the spanker-boom, coming 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 215 
 
 down upon us from the north ard. The wind had 
 died out to a flat calm. There was not a ripple 
 of white water under the ship s fore-foot. There 
 was not a streak of foam nor so much as a bubble 
 in her wake. It was an Irishman s tempest, 
 straight up and down ! The air was hazy, sultry, 
 and almost unbearably hot. There could then be 
 but one meaning in the powerful swell that 
 bore down upon the Thomas Pope. To the 
 northward, just beyond that peaceful horizon, 
 a hurricane was raging. The roller had been 
 sent out by it. 
 
 A ripple rushes out from a stone dropped in a 
 mill-pond. That roller was the ripple magnified 
 to sublime proportions. 
 
 Another roller another ! Then, quicker than 
 the first three, still another ! And as yet no 
 faintest flaw of wind! 
 
 We were trapped. The albatross would be 
 avenged, and Russell vindicated. 
 
 We were then about in the middle of Mozam 
 bique Channel. Madagascar was some three 
 hundred miles to the eastward, and the coast 
 of Africa about the same distance off in the 
 opposite direction. 
 
 For a day and a night the flat calm continued. 
 Then a light breeze sprang up from the sou east. 
 
216 THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 All the afternoon the wind increased, first grad 
 ually, then rapidly, so rapidly that at sundown we 
 had the Pope under storm canvas close-reefed 
 top-sails and reefed foresail. The wind kept fresh 
 ening. It veered steadily toward the east. It 
 raged with increasing fury, a fresh hand at the 
 bellows. The ship was talking loudly pitching 
 and pounding bobbing at it with a will. At ten 
 o clock it was blowing a furious gale. We had 
 got in all sail, save close-reef main-top-sail and 
 reefed fore-sail. At midnight matters grew worse. 
 We got the Pope under main-spencer and fore- 
 top-mast-stay-saiL The wind was blowing with 
 maddened frenzy. The ship was over on her 
 beam ends, with larboard rails and three boats 
 under water. 
 
 I called all hands to batten down the hatches. 
 We stretched the tarpaulins tight across them and 
 we nailed the battens fast to the coamings and 
 head-ledges. 
 
 By two o clock in the morning the spencers 
 and fore-top-mast stay-sails had blown away. The 
 sails on the yards w T ere working loose from under 
 the gaskets. I sent men into the rigging to 
 secure them, but they could not get aloft. When 
 they were about ten feet up, the wind pinned 
 them tight against the ratlines. They were like 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 217 
 
 dead men. I shouted to them to come back, but 
 the wind carried the sound away. You could not 
 have made them hear with a trumpet. I waved 
 my arms at them and they struggled down on 
 deck and made their way aft with ducked heads, 
 coming hand over hand, clinging to the belaying 
 pins along the starboard bulwarks. 
 
 The storm had its way. The sails blew out 
 from under the gaskets. They were nearly new 
 canvas, but they were blown into strips like 
 ribbons. The ship shook with a frightful tremor. 
 
 The wind was blowing with such force that the 
 sea could not rise. Instead, it was rolling over 
 with a white foam; and the foam, as it dashed 
 against the weather side of the ship, would send a 
 spray over us like fine, drifting snow. 
 
 It was full moon, and that heightened the 
 terror. It made the dangers visible and invisible 
 by turns, for clouds rushed over our heads with 
 frightful rapidity. They were very low so low 
 it seemed as if we could reach them. They were 
 like frightened spirits fleeing from the wrath of 
 the storm-god ! 
 
 The cargo was secured with billets of wood, so 
 I had no fears on that score. There was no 
 danger of its shifting. The real peril was the 
 chance of being blown ashore on the coast of 
 
218 THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 Africa, and losing our lives in the surf ; but the 
 wind kept veering and that held us off. 
 
 The hurricane increased in fury until the ship 
 was pressed bodily down into the water and held 
 there. 
 
 Resolving to make sacrifices to save our lives, I 
 ordered the top-mast back-stays cut away, and 
 when that was done the masts went crashing over 
 the ship s sides, carrying everything aloft with 
 them. They lay thumping against the vessel 
 till I thought they would stave her side in. 
 To prevent this, I ordered all the lee rigging 
 cut away. 
 
 The men started from the hurricane-house. 
 Six had knives and axes, and each of them 
 had a rope round his waist. Six others had 
 hold of the ropes, and clung to any stable 
 thing they could reach some grasping the 
 weather lash-rail, some seizing hold of the sky 
 light, and one taking a turn round the stump of 
 the mizzen-mast while the men with the axes 
 and boarding-knives went down the sloping deck ; 
 and, standing in water up to their waists, hacked 
 at the rigging. The wind blew so powerfully 
 that it was next to impossible to swing an axe. 
 Most of the work was done with knives. 
 
 Even the sacrifice of all three masts seemed to 
 have no effect toward easing the ship. No sooner 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 219 
 
 had my men crawled back under the hurricane- 
 house than a tremendous breaching sea boarded 
 us over the weather side the whole length of the 
 vessel, staving bulwarks and clearing everything 
 off deck lee boats, craft, oars, everything but 
 our try-works, weather boat and cook s galley. 
 
 The hurricane continued with unabated fury 
 until eight o clock the next morning. Then it 
 steadily died out, and at noon it was nearly calm. 
 But as the wind went down the sea came up. The 
 waves rose to a dizzy height. 
 
 Despite the difficulty in keeping our footing 
 for the ship tossed and rolled helplessly with not 
 a stitch of canvas to steady her all hands were 
 busy clearing away the wreck, for a tangle of 
 rigging still remained, and there were several 
 spars alongside, though fortunately none of them 
 end-on. 
 
 There was a calm for the space of four hours, 
 and during that calm the ship was covered with 
 birds, which had been blown off from the land 
 gulls, hawks, boobies, parrots, cockatoos, cranes 
 and pheasants bright-colored waifs, wearied with 
 the storm and so eager for a place to rest that 
 they forgot their natural fears of one another and 
 of human kind. They perched on the tops of 
 the broken masts ; they sat upon the dismantled 
 
220 
 
 THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 stanchions; they crowded the rail where any 
 rail remained ; they swarmed in a many-tinted 
 flock upon the shattered skylight ; they lit upon 
 our heads and shoulders. It was calm because 
 we were then in the centre of a revolving storm. 
 The birds had sought its centre by instinct. 
 
 At half-past four the wind began blowing again 
 with terrific force from the west. The starboard 
 rail and the one boat left on the cranes went 
 under water. When the ship began to rise it 
 took the boat off. We had the full power of the 
 hurricane until noon the next day, and all that 
 while we were entirely helpless and lay at the 
 mercy of the winds and waves, all hands aft under 
 the house for safety. 
 
 Now, ever since the storm began, my wife and 
 children had been lying below in her stateroom in 
 utter darkness. It was impossible to keep a light 
 burning ; and when the mizzen-mast went over 
 the side, it smashed the skylight and we had to 
 batten it down as you do the hatches. 
 
 Every little while I would go below to the 
 cabin and ask Mrs. Bobbins if she wanted me to 
 stay with her, but she insisted I must remain 
 on deck. 
 
 " We are safe in God s hands," she said, " and 
 He will care for us and do what is best for us all." 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 221 
 
 Her courage was magnificent. She seemed to 
 have no anxiety for herself. All her fears were 
 for the poor sailors on deck. She urged that I 
 must be there " to save them from being washed 
 overboard. 
 
 One of the children, tired and restless from lack 
 of sleep, piped up, " Papa, why doesn t God make 
 the wind stop blowing ? " 
 
 Once, when the wind was raging its worst, the 
 second mate came up to me and said, " Cap n, I 
 must go below I ve taken a terrible tumble and 
 almost broken my back ! " 
 
 I knew the man was lying ; but as he was 
 too frightened to be of any use on deck, and as 
 he might possibly be some company for my wife, 
 I sent him below. 
 
 There the fellow dropped on his knees upon the 
 cabin floor and began to pray for his " dear wife 
 at home!" That was too much for Mrs. Bobbins, 
 and she giggled outright. 
 
 " Mr. Simpkins," she cried, " it seems to me 
 you d show more sense to pray for the folks in 
 peril for their lives aboard this wreck, instead of 
 praying for a dear lady seven thousand miles 
 away on dry land ! " After that the officer 
 prayed in silence or not at all. 
 
 Ever since the hurricane began, and it had now 
 been raffing for forty-eight hours, I had fed my 
 
222 THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 men on canned provisions I had brought for the 
 cabin table. Lucky dogs they were to get a 
 mouthful ! Cooking was out of the question. 
 But now, as the weather moderated, Mrs. Robbins 
 came to our relief. With the aid of her little 
 alcohol lamp she made coffee for those sorry 
 toilers of the sea the strongest coffee and the 
 best, said one and all that had ever been boiled 
 aboard a wrecked blubber-hunter ! 
 
 When, at last, the wind hauled to the south and 
 died away and the tempest was over, we began to 
 take account of stock. As O Hoolihan has it, we 
 stood off and looked at ourselves. We counted 
 our bruises. 
 
 Merciless Neptune, what a finding ! Jib-boom 
 gone at the cap on the bow-sprit ; fore-mast 
 broken away at the eyes of the rigging, turning 
 the fore-top over till the cross-trees pointed to the 
 zenith ; main-mast snapped off at the head ; 
 mizzen-mast gone, save a wretched stump about 
 seven feet tall; bulwarks and rails shattered; 
 and five of our six boats missing ! 
 
 What a frightful change had come over that 
 poor, storm-stricken ship ! A handsome, well- 
 found barky she had been only two days before 
 taut and in perfect trim, " man-o -war fashion," 
 as sailors say but now she was a pitiable, 
 
"LADDER HILL" AT ST. HELENA. 
 
THE ALBATKOSS. 223 
 
 dismantled wreck, though, thanks to the faith 
 fulness of her builders, her stanch live-oak hull 
 was sound and tight. 
 
 That cabin of ours was a sight to behold. It 
 was a week before we could make it a decent 
 place to live in, for everything was drenched with 
 salt water ; and the two harness-casks, containing 
 salted beef and pork and pickles, had worked out 
 of their lashings and emptied their savory con 
 tents down the sky-light into the cabin. Mrs. 
 Robbins thought it was "much nicer to keep 
 house on land." 
 
 But we were safe and sound, every one of us. 
 Even the " injured " second mate, who was 
 obliged to go below on account of the " terrible 
 tumble he had taken, had now recovered the 
 use of his spine. Furthermore, we were well 
 provisioned. We had food enough and water 
 enough to last us till we could reach some 
 civilized port and refit the Pope. It might be a 
 tedious passage, but we had nothing in particular 
 to be afraid of considering. 
 
 So we made the best of a bad matter. We 
 rigged up jury-masts, and in a week s time we 
 were able to set top-sails and courses, jib and 
 spanker. 
 
 I was puzzled at first to know what port to 
 make for. If we kept on our course to the 
 
224 THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 northward, we should have favorable winds ; but 
 I could think of no port in that direction where 
 we could be sure of getting spars and whale-boats 
 and rigging. In fact, the only port really to be 
 considered was Mauritius. So thither we turned, 
 keeping the ship headed to the southward, and 
 beat around the south of Madagascar. Forty 
 days after the hurricane we sighted the Mauritian 
 harbor of Port Louis. Considering that the Pope 
 was a wrecked ship under frail jury-masts, and 
 considering also that we had to contend against 
 rugged weather nearly all the way, I thought that 
 I had done my duty faithfully and succeeded 
 triumphantly. 
 
 As we were limping into port, Russell came up 
 to me with an insinuating look in his sly little 
 eyes. " Cap n Bobbins," he said, "if you will 
 pardon me, I have something unpleasant to say to 
 you. I think it only just to myself to insist that 
 if you had taken my advice we should not now be 
 putting into Port Louis for repairs ! " 
 
 " What advice, pray ? " 
 
 " Why, don t you remember ? I mean my 
 advice about the albatross, of course the poor, 
 white murdered albatross. Have you forgotten 
 that when you insisted upon having that bird 
 killed I said, Cap n Bobbins, we shall all be very 
 sorry for this ? " 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 225 
 
 " Russell ! " I shouted, forgetting in my amuse- 
 ment to give my mate his " Mister," " what on 
 earth do you mean by thrusting a lubberly fc s le 
 superstition into the face of the master of a ship ? 
 Whaling cap ns don t know poor, grass-combing 
 waisters ! But before the mast oh, that s the 
 place to look for erudition ! Oh, yes ! That s the 
 place to find the true navigator! That s the 
 place, and not the quarter-deck ! " 
 
 Russell turned a paler shade of yellow than 
 usual he was thoroughly scared. 
 
 " But, Cap n, in justice to myself, I must insist 
 that the fact about the albatross rests upon 
 surer ground than any mere fo c s le gossip. I 
 have it, sir, upon the authority of Coleridge ! " 
 
 " Coleridge ! " I bellowed, in a voice that would 
 have quelled a mutiny. 
 
 " Yes, Coleridge." 
 
 " What Coleridge ? " 
 
 " Why, Coleridge the writer." 
 
 " Writer on navigation ? " 
 
 " No, no, no, of course not. I mean the writer 
 of poetry." 
 
 " Not Samuel Taylor Coleridge ? Thunder and 
 lightning, what a first mate! Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge ? And you have the lordly impudence 
 to thrust Samuel Taylor Coleridge into the face 
 
226 THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 of the master of a New Bedford whaler ! By 
 George, you deserve to be ! " 
 
 But I turned on my heel and trod the quarter 
 deck in silence. Already a tug-boat was coming 
 out to meet us. She came alongside, haggled 
 as usual, closed the bargain, and took our line. 
 As soon as we were well under way again, I 
 approached Russell once more. I tried to acquire 
 an insinuating, Russell-like look in my own eyes. 
 
 " Mr. Russell," I began, " if you will pardon 
 me, I have something unpleasant to say to you. 
 I think it only just to myself to insist that, if you 
 take my advice, you ll save wear and tear on your 
 nervous constitution by bidding a fond adieu to 
 this nonsense. Come ! You re an officer now r . 
 Just shake yourself free of the fo c s le. And I 
 tell you, too, Mr. Russell, that it rests on better 
 authority than Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It rests 
 on the authority of a good seaman ! " (Laughing 
 in my sleeve.) 
 
 Poor, humiliated Russell ! He wriggled in his 
 roundabout and grew yellower than before. He 
 looked like a bilious Cape Codder. 
 
 " Why, Charles ! " called a gentle voice from 
 the cabin doorway, "you re not going to dis 
 charge Mr. Russell because he believes in the 
 Ancient Mariner ! " 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 227 
 
 It was my wife. She had been down below, 
 preparing our " long togs " to go ashore, and now 
 she had come on deck just in time to overhear my 
 remarks to Kussell. 
 
 " Hannah, my dear," said I, " Mr. Russell is by 
 no means discharged. I beg you, don t worry ! 
 Mr. Russell is the best mate I ever had in all my 
 sea-faring days, only he s capable of improve 
 ment yet. And as for the albatross his poor, 
 4 murdered albatross seems to me you ve got 
 those wings somewhere, haven t you ? Well, 
 we ll make some kind of a feather ornament of 
 them, and hang it up in the cabin, my dear, for a 
 mascot. For if there s any meaning at all in a 
 murdered albatross (which same I gravely 
 doubt) it means that when you ve been wrecked 
 in a hurricane out on the Mozambique channel, 
 you get into Port Louis with all hands alive and 
 unhurt! Eh, Russell?" 
 
THE CAPTAIN. 
 
 THE Captain does not always talk in the jargon 
 of the fo c s le. In fact it might be said he uses 
 it merely when he " spins a yarn " in order to be 
 more realistic. He talks with his family, his 
 friends at home and his townspeople like any 
 well-educated man whose school-days are far 
 behind him, but who has learned more of men 
 and things from cruising about the world than any 
 books could teach. So this last chapter shall be 
 told in the every-day language he commonly uses 
 when in port among his fellow-men. 
 
 There are several anecdotes of himself that the 
 Captain has forgotten to relate. Perhaps he did 
 not think them of sufficient importance, but I do, 
 and so will you when I have told them as they 
 were told to me. 
 
 The Captain, like many another old salt, loves 
 dearly his country s flag, though he does not say 
 much about it. But he has carried it into too 
 many strange countries and welcomed the sight of 
 it like a friend from home in too many foreign 
 ports not to be fond of it. 
 
 Though he never went to war he had an oppor 
 tunity to defend the flag when it was insulted in 
 an alien country. 
 
THE CAPTAIN. 229 
 
 The Captain used to tell us this story. He said: 
 
 " I was seated one day beneath the shade of 
 some great trees in front of an hotel in St. 
 Helena with two other American captains. 
 
 " It was very hot and the streets were almost 
 deserted. Nobody seemed to be about. We sat 
 there quietly enjoying ourselves, when we saw 
 three burly-looking sailors coming up the street. 
 
 " They belonged on a large English ship that 
 had just anchored in the harbor. They were 
 rough-looking, and evidently meant to make 
 trouble for somebody if they could. 
 
 The United States consul s office was exactly 
 opposite us, and of course our flag was flying from 
 a tall staff in front. 
 
 " When the sailors came up to it, they began 
 to call out in derision, insulting the stars and 
 stripes. Then they cast off the halyards and 
 hauled it down, cursing in the vilest language the 
 6 bloody Yankee flag/ as they called it, and 
 wrapping it about themselves, trailing it in 
 the dust. 
 
 " We could stand it no longer, said the 
 Captain. We felt it was time we took a hand. 
 So when they began to pitch into the consul s 
 clerk, who came out to try to rescue the flag, we, 
 too laid hold of them and a general fight ensued. 
 
230 THE CAPTAIN. 
 
 " < We did not intend to hurt the men, but we 
 did mean to hold them until the police came. 
 
 " I had my man down and was holding him 
 with both hands when he reached up and grabbed 
 my long whiskers. He had me then completely 
 at his mercy. I could not release myself. 
 
 " The clerk ran out of the office to relieve me, 
 and in trying to strike down the hands of the man 
 beneath me he gave me a severe blow over my 
 eye with an ebony ruler. It was so sore I had 
 to stay in my room for several days. 
 
 " The sailors were arrested and fined three 
 pounds each. Their captain paid their fine and 
 the police put them on board their ship. 
 
 " We found out afterwards that they came on 
 shore with the intention of making a row and 
 getting shut up, hoping their captain would go 
 without them ; but you see their plan did not 
 succeed/ 
 
 It was during the war of 1863 that the Captain 
 was at St. Helena, and he was one day on shore 
 dining at the hotel. There were a number of 
 ladies and gentlemen in the party. Several of 
 the latter were captains of American ships that 
 lay in port. 
 
 The Captain said : 
 
 " A large English ship had just anchored in the 
 harbor, and her Captain came ashore to take dinner. 
 
THE CAPTAIN. 231 
 
 " He evidently had left his good manners aboard 
 ship, for he entered the room in a blustering 
 manner, ignoring the ladies present, and seated 
 himself near the head of the table and began to 
 talk to an English officer who was one of the 
 guests, about our Civil War, asking questions in 
 a most offensive manner. 
 
 " We were all feeling very much pleased over 
 the news of victory we had received and some one 
 began to tell the captain of Sherman s march to 
 the sea. 
 
 " The English captain, whom we afterwards 
 learned was one of England s naval reserves, 
 spoke up in a loud and boasting tone, saying, 
 ( Well, sir, we will go over and heip the South 
 erners whip the Yankees when we get back to 
 England/ 
 
 " Captain Kelley, an American and a man of 
 small statue, was sitting near me, and I noticed 
 his temper was rising. He could not sit still in 
 his chair. As the English captain went on with 
 his boisterous and blustering talk, he jumped to 
 his feet, pushed up his coat-sleeves, looked the 
 Englishman full in the face, and said, It is not 
 necessary for you to wait to whip Yankees. Come 
 out into the street and I will give you a chance, 
 for I m a Yankee. 
 
232 THE CAPTAIN. 
 
 " Kelley was about one-half the size of the 
 Englishman, who looked thoroughly ashamed. 
 He made a lame sort of an apology and left the 
 house. He got his supplies on board that very 
 afternoon and sailed that night, so we never saw 
 him again." 
 
 "How did I happen to be in St. Helena?" 
 said the Captain. 
 
 "It happened this way. We lay in the harbor 
 of Mauritius two months repairing damages, and 
 getting new masts, rigging and sails; but we 
 couldn t get a whaling boat. 
 
 " My crew were deserting and good men were 
 hard to obtain in that quarter, so as soon as my 
 sails were ready, I put to sea and finished rigging 
 her. If any whales had come in sight we couldn t 
 have taken them, as we had only one boat. 
 
 "After being a month at sea> we spoke the 
 Plover, another whaler, and got one old boat 
 from her. So, having now two boats, we suc 
 ceeded in capturing two whales. 
 
 " At the end of six months we put into Port 
 Louis and found four new whale-boats had been 
 sent us. But we were in as bad a condition as 
 before, for now we had plenty of boats and no 
 crew to man them. 
 
 " We went to the Seychelle Islands and there I 
 shipped nine men. We cruised in the Indian 
 
THE CAPTAIN. 233 
 
 Ocean for two years, with poor success, so I 
 decided to head the bark homeward. We had 
 fine weather round the Cape of Good Hope and 
 steered straight for the Island of St. Helena, 
 where we stayed two weeks, so I had a chance to 
 see all there was in that noted place." 
 
 St. Helena lies in the track of all vessels bound 
 from Cape of Good Hope to the United States. 
 
 " You know, perhaps, that the island is twenty- 
 eight miles in circumference, and is in latitude 
 15 55" South, longitude 5 42" West. It rises 
 up out of the sea like a great tower on the 
 horizon. You can see it forty miles away, a 
 great blur in the distance, on a clear day. As 
 the vessel approaches it, Dana s peak, 2,700 feet 
 high, is first seen above the clouds. 
 
 " The island has good anchorage on the north 
 side abreast of Jamestown. 
 
 "I took my family on shore and we visited 
 many parts of the island and all the places that 
 are of world-wide interest on account of their 
 connection with the great Napoleon. The Briars, 
 where he lived while Longwood Old House was 
 being prepared for him, was occupied by my 
 esteemed friend, George Moss, Esq. It is situ 
 ated on a plateau at the foot of the hills and 
 has a fine garden. It is surrounded by wild and 
 
234 THE CAPTAIN. 
 
 rocky scenery. The Briars has always been kept 
 as it was when Napoleon lived there. In one of 
 the rooms it is said that he gave the dictation to 
 Las Casas. 
 
 " Longwood Old House was originally a farm 
 house, but verandas were added and the place 
 otherwise improved. After Napoleon s death the 
 house fell into a state of dilapidation. 
 
 " Longwood New House was built for Napoleon, 
 but he never lived in it. It is a one-storied build 
 ing, and has fifty-six rooms of various sizes. 
 
 " It is pleasantly situated in the Eastean part of 
 the island, 1,760 feet above the sea. 
 
 "Another interesting building is St. Paul s 
 church, in whose graveyard are buried many 
 strangers who have died on the island. 
 
 " Jamestown is in a valley between two lofty 
 hills and is a picturesque spot, with roads winding 
 up the hills on each side. 
 
 " Ladder Hill is 600 feet high, and is crowned 
 with a strong fort with barracks for a regiment of 
 soldiers. 
 
 " If one wishes to ascend it he may go by the 
 road which winds up the sides of the hill, or, 
 curiously enough, by a long ladder with 365 
 steps, which reaches from the town at the bottom 
 to the fortress at the top." 
 

THE CAPTAIN. 235 
 
 Tell us some of your adventures while there, 
 Captain. 
 
 "Yes, I think I have given you geography and 
 history enough. But it is pleasant for me to 
 remember I have been in the very rooms where 
 the great Napoleon planned and thought and 
 regretted his life away. 
 
 " Our adventures ? Well, here s one. The 
 very first day we went ashore we had dinner in 
 Smith s hotel. While we were eating, down came 
 the walls over our heads covering us with plaster. 
 
 " No, it wasn t an earthquake, but the work of 
 the white ant which eats up the woodwork of the 
 houses and down they fall when least expected. 
 I tell you, it is dangerous. So some of the 
 dwellings are made of teak wood and the ware 
 houses of iron, both indestructible by this pest. 
 
 " We had many drives about the island, visiting 
 Napoleon s grave and drinking from the spring 
 near Longwood, where he walked every day as 
 long as he was able. It is a pleasant spot, cool 
 and shady from the overhanging willow trees. 
 
 " Pleasant as was our stay in St. Helena, after 
 our long ocean voyage, we were glad to point the 
 bow of our vessel homeward. 
 
 " Yet we were troubled greatly by rumors we 
 had heard of the Confederate cruisers, always 
 
236 THE CAPTAIN. 
 
 ready to pick up vessels belonging to the North, 
 and we kept a good watch out, I assure you, for 
 such cruisers. 
 
 " North of the Bermudas we saw traces of the 
 foe in the shape of an abandoned hull, her masts 
 gone, and bearing the marks of fire. We ran 
 near enough to hail her, but no one was on board. 
 
 " At last we, too, ran into danger. When only 
 fifty miles south of Nantucket Shoals, our lookout 
 sighted a steamer two points off our lee bow. I 
 went aloft, fearing the worst. My fears were 
 confirmed when I made her out to be a long, 
 rakish, bark-rigged steamer, standing across our 
 bows and heading towards the north. 
 
 " I was sure we were lost. But we had suffered 
 all kinds of perils and were to be spared this. For 
 a large ship had been in sight of us all day about 
 eight miles to the windward, steering in the same 
 direction that we were. 
 
 " She was a richer prize than we would be, and 
 we saw through our glasses the steamer overhaul 
 her and send a boat to board her. 
 
 " It was about sunset when this happened. So 
 we clapped on all sail, put out our lights and 
 sailed away, fearing lest the steamer should take 
 us ; but the next day it was thick and foggy, and 
 we saw the steamer no more. 
 
THE CAPTAIK. 237 
 
 " About thirty miles south of No Man s Land 
 we fell in with a fleet of fishing vessels and gave 
 them a great fright, for they thought we were the 
 enemy. 
 
 " "When we lowered a boat to go alongside of 
 them, we could see them pulling in their lines to 
 try to escape us. 
 
 " But we soon convinced them we were all 
 right, and exchanged some of our salt pork for 
 a fine mess of fresh mackerel. They told us how 
 the land bore, and the next morning, June 25, at 
 five o clock, we came to anchor off Butler s flat in 
 the lower harbor, New Bedford. 
 
 " We had left St. Helena on the first of May, 
 and it was just three years and eleven months 
 since we had sailed from home on what proved a 
 long, disastrous and unfortunate voyage. 
 
 "We had suffered from a severe hurricane, 
 losing our boats, which were not replaced for 
 nearly a year. 
 
 " Our officers and crew had deserted us, which 
 completely spoiled our plans. 
 
 " Yet our ship was new and well-provisioned, 
 and we were so far from home we could not return. 
 
 " We had seen whales enough to overload us 
 with oil, but we could not capture them because 
 we had not men enough to do it. 
 
238 THE CAPTAIN. 
 
 " Yet, when we got home, oil was so high that 
 what we had brought a good price, so our voyage 
 was a paying one, after all. 
 
 " Oh, I must tell you that we found out after 
 we got ashore the vessel that we saw captured 
 was the Isaac "Webb of New York, and that after 
 catching her, the steamer tried to find us, but 
 thanks to the fog and our good fortune, she was? 
 unsuccessful." 
 
A TYPICAL WHALEMAN. 
 
 Captain Charles Bobbins, who passed over the other day 
 at the age of 81, was an American down to the feet 
 Lemuel Bobbins his father, and Rachel Bobbins his mother. 
 The former died when Charles was nine years old, and 
 the boy parted with school at the age of twelve, for there 
 were nine sisters and two brothers to be supported. At 
 that age the boy sought an opportunity to ship, but he 
 was declared by the agents to be too young, and he worked 
 at the lever of the old hand press in The Mercury office 
 and carried papers for three years. When he was fifteen, 
 however, he shipped on the ship Swift, without his 
 mother s knowledge, although she subsequently gave her 
 consent. The ship was to sail February 1, but the vessel 
 was frozen in at the dock. Fearing desertions, the captain 
 ordered the men to saw a channel through the ice, and for 
 ten days she was frozen in off Clarks Point with the 
 lonesomest boy in the world on board. 
 
 At length the ship sailed away in February, 1837, and 
 thereafter Bobbins lived more stories than all the writers 
 could invent. He visited isles of the Pacific which civili 
 zation had never touched. In proof of the claim that he 
 encountered the heathen in his utter blindness, the captain 
 used to affirm that not only were they cannibals, but that 
 they had no knowledge of any kind of intoxicating liquor. 
 It was August, 1841, after an absence of fifty-four months, 
 before the boy came back. He went away a stripling, 
 weighing ninety-six, and when he came home he weighed 
 one hundred and sixty, and had to be introduced to his 
 sisters. 
 
240 A TYPICAL WHALEMAN. 
 
 He received one hundred dollars and a suit of clothes 
 for four and a half years work and in a few weeks he 
 sailed again, this time as boatsteerer on the Balaena. He 
 was gone nearly four years, adding to the store of novel 
 experiences which filled his life. While cruising down 
 the line one day, his vessel picked up a canoe containing 
 eight persons, Kanakas, who turned out to be the royal 
 family of Ascension. There had been a revolution and 
 the king and queen and princes had been cast adrift lit 
 erally as well as practically. The Kanakas did these 
 things a century ago, more humanely than the enlightened 
 nations of the earth, exampli gratia, Servia now rid them 
 selves of their rulers. One of the princes had a wound 
 in his shoulder where a shark had seized him when he 
 jumped overboard to capture it for food. 
 
 The ship took eighteen hundred barrels of sperm this 
 voyage, and when the captain reached home he married. 
 Two months later he was at sea again as mate of the 
 Balaena. On the Peru grounds small pox broke out on 
 board the ship, and several of the crew died. Bobbins had 
 a light attack of the disease, and finally left the ship at 
 Payta and reached home after a year and a half to greet 
 his wife and sail again in a few weeks as mate of the bark 
 Hope. To the Indian Ocean he sailed this time and was 
 gone two years and a half. Arriving home in May, 1850, 
 he sailed four or five months later as master of the same 
 vessel. He was gone thirty months on this voyage. His 
 next voyage as master of the bark Elisha Dunbar, was a 
 broken one, and he returned ill, but sailed again in the 
 Clara Bell and added thirty months more to his life on 
 the ocean wave. 
 
 In 1859 Captain Bobbins sailed in command of the bark 
 Thomas Pope on a four years voyage, and this time he 
 
A TYPICAL WHALEMAN. 
 
 241 
 
 took his wife and children with him. The vessel was 
 struck by a hurricane in the Mozambique channel, her 
 masts were torn out, the mizzen mast tearing out the sky 
 light so that the water rushed into the cabin. The ves 
 sel lay on her beam ends, and the captain s wife and htt. 
 children clung to the weather side. An officer fell on 
 his knees and prayed for the safety of his wife who was 
 at home. Since his wife was safe and sound ashore, Mrs. 
 Bobbins suggested it would be more to the purpose to pray 
 for those about him who were in extremity. When the 
 storm abated, jury masts were rigged and the cripple 
 ship drifted into Mauritius. All the whaleboats were lost 
 and none could be procured nearer than New Bedford 
 So the ship waited nine months for the boats. A child 
 was born to Captain Bobbins on this voyage. So t 
 story runs. Once his ship was struck by a meteor. At 
 another time he was for months in a leaking ship, 
 day a bomb gun exploded and tore the mate s hand, 
 to "the shifts, Captain Bobbins amputated it and subs 
 quently was complimented by a professional surgeon upoi 
 
 doing a skillful job. 
 
 We but touch upon the continued hazards, here an 
 there, to remind this generation of the men who i 
 a historv which thrills the world. 
 
 And what manner of man was Captain Bobbins, whom 
 we bring to mind as a type of the New Bedford whaleman? 
 That he was a courageous, valorous man, a man of hardy 
 daring we need not say, but withal, he was a gentle, 
 kindly, conscientious Godfearing man, excelling in char 
 acter It is the combination of these qualities wine 
 makes it our especial pride to cherish the example < 
 
 veterans of the sea. 
 
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