r the purpose.

The most interesting part of the whole business, though, to us poor
half-starved wretches, was the plentiful supply of fresh meat. Porpoise
beef is, when decently cooked, fairly good eating to a landsman; judge,
then, what it must have been to us. Of course the tit-bits, such as the
liver, kidneys, brains, etc., could not possibly fall to our lot; but
we did not complain, we were too thankful to get something eatable, and
enough of it. Moreover, although few sailors in English ships know it,
porpoise beef improves vastly by keeping, getting tenderer every day the
longer it hangs, until at last it becomes as tasty a viand as one could
wish to dine upon. It was a good job for us that this was the case,
for while the porpoises lasted the "harness casks," or salt beef
receptacles, were kept locked; so if any man had felt unable to eat
porpoise--well, there was no compulsion, he could go hungry.

We were now in the haunts of the Sperm Whale, or "Cachalot," a brilliant
look-out being continually kept for any signs of their appearing. One
officer and a foremast hand were continually on watch during the day
in the main crow's-nest, one harpooner and a seaman in the fore one.
A bounty of ten pounds of tobacco was offered to whoever should first
report a whale, should it be secured, consequently there were no sleepy
eyes up there. Of course none of those who were inexperienced stood much
chance against the eagle-eyed Portuguese; but all tried their best,
in the hope of perhaps winning some little favour from their hard
taskmasters. Every evening at sunset it was "all hands shorten sail,"
the constant drill rapidly teaching even these clumsy landsmen how to
find their way aloft, and do something else besides hold on to anything
like grim death when they got there.

At last, one beautiful day, the boats were lowered and manned, and away
went the greenies on their first practical lesson in the business of the
voyage. As before noticed, there were two greenies in each boat, they
being so arranged that whenever one of them "caught a crab," which of
course was about every other stroke, his failure made little difference
to the boat's progress. They learned very fast under the terrible
imprecations and storm of blows from the iron-fisted and iron-hearted
officers, so that before the day was out the skipper was satisfied of
our ability to deal with a "fish" should he be lucky enough to "raise"
one. I was, in virtue of m