A few
years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand,
who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh
the beach. But this custom has now become obsolete; turn we then to the
one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads
are kept manned from sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their
regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two
hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant
the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There
you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the
deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and
between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even
as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old
Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with
nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the
drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the
most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests
you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts
of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear
of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are
never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner--for
all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and
your bill of fare is immutable.

In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years'
voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the
mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be
deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion
of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute
of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a
comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock,
a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small
and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your
most usual point of perch is the head of the t' gallant-mast, where you
stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called
the t' gallant cross-trees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner
feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns. To be sure,
in cold weather y