returned to the ship, having been absent
only two hours, during which we had caught sufficient to provide all
hands with three good meals. Not one of the crew had ever seen or heard
of such fishing before, so my pride and pleasure may be imagined. A
little learning may be a dangerous thing at times, but it certainly
is often handy to have about you. The habit of taking notice
and remembering has often been the means of saving many lives in
suddenly-met situations of emergency, at sea perhaps more than anywhere
else, and nothing can be more useful to a sailor than the practice of
keeping his weather-eye open.

In Barbadoes there is established the only regular flying-fishery in the
world, and in just the manner I have described, except that the boats
are considerably larger, is the whole town supplied with delicious fish
at so trifling a cost as to make it a staple food among all classes.

But I find that I am letting this chapter run to an unconscionable
length, and it does not appear as if we were getting at the southward
very fast either. Truth to tell, our progress was mighty slow; but
we gradually crept across the belt of calms, and a week after our
never-to-be-forgotten haul of flying-fish we got the first of the
south-east trades, and went away south at a good pace--for us. We made
the Island of Trinidada with its strange conical-topped pillar, the
Ninepin Rock, but did not make a call, as the skipper was beginning to
get fidgety at not seeing any whales, and anxious to get down to where
he felt reasonably certain of falling in with them. Life had been
very monotonous of late, and much as we dreaded still the prospect of
whale-fighting (by "we," of course, I mean the chaps forward), it began
to lose much of its terror for us, so greatly did we long for a little
change. Keeping, as we did, out of the ordinary track of ships, we
hardly ever saw a sail. We had no recreations; fun was out of the
question; and had it not been for a Bible, a copy of Shakespeare, and a
couple of cheap copies of "David Copperfield" and "Bleak House," all of
which were mine, we should have had no books.

CHAPTER VIII. ABNER'S WHALE

In a previous chapter I have referred to the fact of a bounty being
offered to whoever should first sight a useful whale, payable only in
the event of the prize being secured by the ship. In consequence of our
ill-success, and to stimulate the watchfulness of all, that bounty was
now increased from