SHE GOES.'"

By this resolute and determined conduct he kept the men to their duty
and succeeded in accomplishing one of the most daring enterprises
perhaps ever attempted.

An immortal phrase, this simple dictum of first mate Hudson of the
Betsy, "Out she goes, or down she goes," and not unworthy of being
mentioned in the same breath with Farragut's "Damn the torpedoes."

Joined by his brother Samuel in the schooner Pilgrim, which was used
as a tender in the sealing trade, Amasa Delano frequented unfamiliar
beaches until he had taken his toll of skins and was ready to bear away
for Canton to sell them. There were many Yankee ships after seals in
those early days, enduring more peril and privation than the whalemen,
roving over the South Pacific among the rock-bound islands unknown
to the merchant navigator. The men sailed wholly on shares, a seaman
receiving one per cent of the catch and the captain ten per cent, and
they slaughtered the seal by the million, driving them from the most
favored haunts within a few years. For instance, American ships first
visited Mas a Fuera in 1797, and Captain Delano estimated that during
the seven years following three million skins were taken to China from
this island alone. He found as many as fourteen vessels there at one
time, and he himself carried away one hundred thousand skins. It was a
gold mine for profit while it lasted.

There were three Delano brothers afloat in two vessels, and of their
wanderings Amasa set down this epitome: "Almost the whole of our
connections who were left behind had need of our assistance, and to look
forward it was no more than a reasonable calculation to make that
our absence would not be less than three years... together with the
extraordinary uncertainty of the issue of the voyage, as we had nothing
but our hands to depend upon to obtain a cargo which was only to be done
through storms, dangers, and breakers, and taken from barren rocks in
distant regions. But after a voyage of four years for one vessel and
five for the other, we were all permitted to return safe home to our
friends and not quite empty-handed. We had built both of the vessels we
were in and navigated them two and three times around the globe." Each
one of the brothers had been a master builder and rigger and a navigator
of ships in every part of the world.

By far the most important voyage undertaken by American merchantmen
during the decade of brilliant achievement followi