a the Envoy went
cruising in the North Pacific and in fifty-five days she took 2,800
barrels of whale-oil and 40,000 pounds of baleen. With this she returned
to Manila and shipped the bone and 1,800 barrels of oil to London, the
shipment yielding $37,500 net.

Again she went cruising and secured 2,500 barrels of oil and 35,000
pounds of bone, bringing both into San Francisco in 1851, where she
disposed of the oil for $73,450 and shipped the bone to her home port
where it brought $12,500. To complete the record of her good luck, San
Francisco merchants offered $6,000 for the condemned old bark that had,
in two years, or thereabout, brought to her owners and venturesome crew
the sum of $138,450.

With the captain's share as one-seventeenth of the "lay" the skipper of
the Envoy must have made $8,000. "There were common sailors on that ship
that turned up a thousand dollars in pocket when they were paid off,"
said Ben Gibson, when we were discussing it. "The second mate, with his
one-forty-fifth, cleaned up three thousand. Hope I'll do half as well in
the same length of time with the Scarboro."

I learned that the largest catch brought into port by an American
whaler, as the result of a single cruise, included 5,300 barrels of oil
and 200 barrels of sperm, with 50,000 pounds of bone. It was taken in a
voyage lasting only 28 months by the South America, of Providence,
Captain R. N. Sowle. It sold for $89,000 in 1849, and the cost of ship
and outfit was $40,000.

The Pioneer, of New London, Captain Ebenezer Morgan, holds the medal for
the largest sum realized from a single voyage. She left her home port on
June 4, 1864, for Davis Strait and returned a year and three months
later with a cargo of 1,391 barrels of oil and 22,650 pounds of bone,
which sold at war-time prices for $150,000. The outfitting of this craft
cost $35,000.

"Those are all great tales," quoth Tom Anderly, when we had marveled
over these lucky voyages. "But how about the brig Emeline of New
Bedford? She sailed on July 11, 1841 and in twenty-six months she
returned home with how much ile d'you suppose?"

Ben and I gave it up. Some enormous sum, we supposed, was realized.

"Yah!" said Tom. "A fat lot. Twenty-six months and ten barrels of ile,
and her skipper killed by a whale."

"Oh, now that you're on the hard luck tack," quoth Ben, "there was the
Junior, of New Bedford. I've heard my uncle tell of her. Out a year and
two months and put back to por