nker," none of them attempted to alight upon the body of the
dead monster. This bird, however, somewhat like a small albatross,
but of dirty-grey colour, and with a peculiar excrescence on his beak,
boldly took his precarious place upon the carcase, and at once began to
dig into the blubber. He did not seem to make much impression, but he
certainly tried hard.

It was dark before we got our prize secured by the fluke-chain, so that
we could not commence operations before morning. That night it blew
hard, and we got an idea of the strain these vessels are sometimes
subjected to. Sometimes the ship rolled one way and the whale another,
being divided by a big sea, the wrench at the fluke-chain, as the two
masses fell apart down different hollows, making the vessel quiver from
truck to keelson as if she was being torn asunder. Then we would come
together again with a crash and a shock that almost threw everybody
out of their bunks. Many an earnest prayer did I breathe that the chain
would prove staunch, for what sort of a job it would be to go after
that whale during the night, should he break loose, I could only
faintly imagine. But all our gear was of the very best; no thieving
ship-chandler had any hand in supplying our outfit with shoddy rope and
faulty chain, only made to sell, and ready at the first call made upon
it to carry away and destroy half a dozen valuable lives. There was one
coil of rope on board which the skipper had bought for cordage on the
previous voyage from a homeward-bound English ship, and it was the butt
of all the officers' scurrilous remarks about Britishers and their
gear. It was never used but for rope-yarns, being cut up in lengths, and
untwisted for the ignominious purpose of tying things up--"hardly good
enough for that," was the verdict upon it.

Tired as we all were, very little sleep came to us that night--we were
barely seasoned yet to the exigencies of a whaler's life--but afterwards
I believe nothing short of dismasting or running the ship ashore would
wake us, once we got to sleep. In the morning we commenced operations
in a howling gale of wind, which placed the lives of the officers on the
"cutting in" stage in great danger. The wonderful seaworthy qualities
of our old ship shone brilliantly now. When an ordinary modern-built
sailing-ship would have been making such weather of it as not only to
drown anybody about the deck, but making it impossible to keep your
footing anywhere wit