in manner. Sailors do not mind a ship rolling or
pitching, any more than a rider minds the motion of his horse; but when
she does both at once, with no approach to regularity in her movements,
it makes them feel angry with her. What, then, must our feelings
have been under such trying conditions, with that mountain of matter
alongside to which so much sheer hard labour had to be done, while the
sky was getting greasy and the wind beginning to whine in that doleful
key which is the certain prelude to a gale?

Everybody worked like Chinamen on a contract, as if there was no such
feeling as fatigue. Little was said, but we all realized that unless
this job was got over before what was brooding burst upon us, we should
certainly lose some portion of our hard-won whale. Still, our utmost
possible was all we could do; and when at daylight the head was hauled
alongside for cutting up, the imminent possibility of losing it, though
grievous to think of, worried nobody, for all had done their best. The
gale had commenced in business-like fashion, but the sea was horrible.
It was almost impossible to keep one's footing on the stage. At times
the whole mass of the head would be sucked down by the lee roll of
the ship, and go right under her keel, the fluke-chain which held it
grinding and straining as if it would tear the bows out of her. Then
when she rolled back again the head would rebound to the surface right
away from the ship, where we could not reach it to cut. Once or twice it
bounced up beneath our feet, striking the stage and lifting it with its
living load several inches, letting it fall again with a jerk that made
us all cling for dear life to our precarious perch.

In spite of these capers, we managed to get the junk off the head. It
was a tremendous lift for us; I hardly think we had ever raised such a
weight before. The skipper himself estimated it at fifteen tons, which
was no small load for the tackles in fine weather, but with the ship
tumbling about in her present fashion, it threatened to rip the mainmast
out by the roots--not, of course, the dead-weight strain; but when it
was nearly aboard, her sudden lee wallow sometimes floated the whole
mass, which the next instant, on the return roll, would be torn out of
water, with all the force of the ship suddenly rolling the other way.
Every splinter, every rope-yarn of her groaned again under this savage
treatment; but so splendid was her construction that she never