826 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" Trying out " went on busily all night, and by nightfall of the 

 next day the ship had resumed her normal appearance, and we were a 

 tun and a quarter of oil to the good. Blackfish oil is of medium 

 quality, but I learned that, according to the rule of " roguery in all 

 trades," it was the custom to mix quantities such as we had just ob- 

 tained with better class whale oil, and thus get a much higher price 

 than it was really worth. 



We had now been eight days out, having had nothing, so far, but 

 steady breezes and fine weather. As it was late autumn — the first 

 week in October — I rather wondered at this, for even in my brief ex- 

 perience I had learned to dread a " fall " voyage across the " Western 

 Ocean." 



Gradually the face of the sky changed, and the feel of the air, from 

 balmy and genial, became raw and cheerless. The little wave tops 

 broke short off and blew backward, apparently against the wind, while 

 the old vessel had an uneasy, unnatural motion, caused by a long, new 

 swell rolling athwart the existing set of the sea. 



We were evidently in for a fair specimen of Western Ocean 

 weather, but the clumsy-looking, old-fashioned Cachalot made no 

 more fuss over it than one of the long-winged sea birds that floated 

 around, intent only upon snapping up any stray scraps that might 

 escape from us. Higher rose the wind, heavier rolled the sea, yet 

 never a drop of water did we ship, nor did anything about the deck 

 betoken what a heavy gale was blowing. During the worst of the 

 weather, and just after the wind had shifted back into the northeast, 

 making an uglier cross sea than ever get up, along comes an immense 

 four-masted iron ship homeward bound. She was staggering under a 

 veritable mountain of canvas, fairly burying her bows in the foam at 

 every forward drive, and actually wetting the clews of the upper top- 

 sails in the smothering masses of spray, that every few minutes almost 

 hid her hull from sight. 



It was a splendid picture; but — for the time — I felt glad I was not 

 on board of her. In a very few minutes she was out of our ken, fol- 

 lowed by the admiration of all. Then came, from the other direction, 

 a huge steamship, taking no more notice of the gale than as if it were 

 calm. Straight through the sea she rushed, dividing the mighty rol- 

 lers to the heart, and often bestriding three seas at once, the center 

 one spreading its many tons of foaming water fore and aft, so that from 

 every orifice spouted the seething brine. Compared with these grey- 

 hounds of the wave, we resembled nothing so much as some old light- 

 ship bobbing serenely around, as if part and parcel of the mid- Atlantic. 

 The gale gradually blew itself out, leaving behind only a long 

 and very heavy swell to denote the deep-reaching disturbance that the 

 ocean had endured. And now we were within the range of the sargasso 



