command. There they were despots, for nowhere was the
discipline more severe than on whalemen. The rule was a word and a
blow--and the word was commonly a curse. The ship was out for a
five-years' cruise, perhaps, and the captain knew that the safety of all
depended upon unquestioning obedience to his authority. Once in a while
even the cowed crew would revolt, and infrequent stories of mutiny and
murder appear in the record of the whale trade. The whaler, like a
man-of-war, carried a larger crew than was necessary for the work of
navigation, and it was necessary to devise work to keep the men employed.
As a result, the ships were kept cleaner than any others in the merchant
service, even though the work of trying out the blubber was necessarily
productive of smoke, soot, and grease.

As a rule the voyage to the Pacific whaling waters was round Cape Horn,
though occasionally a vessel made its way to the eastward and rounded the
Cape of Good Hope. Almost always the world was circumnavigated before
return. In early days the Pacific whalers found their game in plenty along
the coast of Chili; but in time they were forced to push further and
further north until the Japan Sea and Bering Sea became the favorite
fishing places.

The whale was usually first sighted by the lookout in the crow's nest. A
warm-blooded animal, breathing with lungs, and not with gills, like a
fish, the whale is obliged to come to the surface of the water
periodically to breathe. As he does so he exhales the air from his lungs
through blow-holes or spiracles at the top of his head; and this warm,
moist air, coming thus from his lungs into the cool air, condenses,
forming a jet of vapor looking like a fountain, though there is, in fact,
no spout of water. "There she blows! B-l-o-o-o-ws! Blo-o-ows!" cries the
lookout at this spectacle. All is activity at once on deck, the captain
calling to the lookout for the direction and character of the "pod" or
school. The sperm whale throws his spout forward at an angle, instead of
perpendicularly into the air, and hence is easily distinguished from right
whales at a distance. The ship is then headed toward the game, coming to
about a mile away. As the whale, unless alarmed, seldom swims more than
two and a half miles an hour, and usually stays below only about
forty-five minutes at a time, there is little difficulty in overhauling
him. Then the boats are launched, the captain and a sufficient number of
men stayi