s any man. To this young man, whose real name was
Charles Atkinson, by a lucky thought of the captain, the care of me
was especially entrusted. Betsy was proud of his charge, and, to do
him justice, acquitted himself with great diligence and adroitness
through the whole of the voyage. From the beginning I had somehow
looked upon Betsy as a woman, hearing him so spoken of, and this
reconciled me in some measure to the want of a maid, which I had been
used to. But I was a manageable girl at all times, and gave nobody
much trouble.

I have not knowledge enough to give an account of my voyage, or to
remember the names of the seas we passed through, or the lands which
we touched upon, in our course. The chief thing I can remember, for I
do not remember the events of the voyage in any order, was Atkinson
taking me up on deck, to see the great whales playing about in the
sea. There was one great whale came bounding up out of the sea, and
then he would dive into it again, and then would come up at a distance
where nobody expected him, and another whale was following after him.
Atkinson said they were at play, and that that lesser whale loved that
bigger whale, and kept it company all through the wide seas: but I
thought it strange play, and a frightful kind of love; for I every
minute expected they would come up to our ship and toss it. But
Atkinson said a whale was a gentle creature, and it was a sort of
sea-elephant, and that the most powerful creatures in nature are
always the least hurtful. And he told me how men went out to take
these whales, and stuck long, pointed darts into them; and how the sea
was discoloured with the blood of these poor whales for many miles
distance: and I admired at the courage of the men, but I was sorry
for the inoffensive whale. Many other pretty sights he used to shew
me, when he was not on watch, or doing some duty for the ship. No one
was more attentive to his duty than he; but at such times as he had
leisure, he would shew me all pretty sea sights:--the dolphins and
porpoises that came before a storm, and all the colours which the sea
changed to; how sometimes it was a deep blue, and then a deep green,
and sometimes it would seem all on fire: all these various appearances
he would shew me, and attempt to explain the reason of them to me,
as well as my young capacity would admit of. There was a lion and a
tiger on board, going to England as a present to the king, and it
was a great diversion