n, to whom their perilous calling seems to have become
a second nature. And on other occasions I have lamented that our own
whalers, either at home or in the colonies, never seemed to take so
kindly to the sperm whale fishery as the hardy "down Easters," who first
taught them the business; carried it on with increasing success,
in spite of their competition and the depredations of the ALABAMA;
flourished long after the English fishery was dead; and even now
muster a fleet of ships engaged in the same bold and hazardous calling.
Therefore, it is the more pleasant to me to be able to chronicle some of
the doings of Captain Gilroy, familiarly known as "Paddy," the master
of the CHANCE, who was unsurpassed as a whale-fisher or a seaman by any
Yankee that ever sailed from Martha's Vineyard.

He was a queer little figure of a man--short, tubby, with scanty red
hair, and a brogue thick as pea-soup. Eccentric in most things, he was
especially so in his dress, which he seemed to select on the principle
of finding the most unfitting things to wear. Rumour credited him with a
numerous half-breed progeny--certainly he was greatly mixed up with the
Maories, half his crew being made up of his dusky friends and relations
by MARRIAGE. Overflowing with kindliness and good temper, his ship was
a veritable ark of refuge for any unfortunate who needed help, which
accounted for the numerous deserters from Yankee whalers who were to be
found among his crew. Such whaling skippers as our late commander hated
him with ferocious intensity; and but for his Maori and half-breed
bodyguard, I have little doubt he would have long before been killed.
Living as he had for many years on that storm-beaten coast, he had
become, like his Maories, familiar with every rock and tree in fog or
clear, by night or day; he knew them, one might almost say, as the seal
knows them, and feared them as little. His men adored him. They believed
him capable of anything in the way of whaling, and would as soon have
thought of questioning the reality of daylight as the wisdom of his
decisions.

I went on board the evening of, our arrival, hearing some rumours of the
doings of the old CHANCE and her crew, also with the idea that perhaps
I might find some countrymen among his very mixed crowd. The first man I
spoke to was Whitechapel to the backbone, plainly to be spotted as such
as if it had been tattooed on his forehead. Making myself at home with
him, I desired to know