104 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



attempted to attach to himself as many followers as possible. 

 Upon reaching the wharf, he steered his customer-conquests 

 past the runners of various boarding-houses and brothels to his 

 own firm's establishment. There they were given facilities 

 for a bath and a thorough cleansing, after which they were 

 furnished with an outfit of "long togs," or shore clothes. 

 Then they were shorn of the superfluous hair which had ac- 

 cumulated on heads and faces during long months at sea. 

 And after a further bit of attention in the form of an advance 

 of spending-money, they were at length ready to sally forth 

 in search of the delights of life on shore. 



All this, of course, the infitter did with the understanding 

 that he would receive generous compensation when the men 

 obtained their lays, always paid within a few days after land- 

 ing. But what of those men who had no net earnings await- 

 ing them, because they had returned from a two to four years' 

 voyage actually in debt to the owners? Such hands, upon 

 landing, found it possible to secure attention only upon one 

 condition, namely, that they agree to undertake another voyage 

 within the immediate future. With this understanding, the 

 infitter, suddenly turned outfitter again, would make advances 

 upon the terms regularly granted to outgoing seamen. And 

 the men in question, after a short period of hectic revelry or 

 furious dissipation, would find themselves once more at sea, 

 bound on a cruise of three to four years' duration. 



But perhaps these hands, after all, were not less fortunate 

 than their comrades who spent several weeks ashore in dissipat- 

 ing the small savings of the previous voyage. For the average 

 seaman was emphatically not in the hands of his friends while 

 in port with money in his possession. The keepers of the 

 boarding-houses, brothels, and grog-shops, assisted by their 

 parasites and agents, and aided and abetted by the outfitters, 

 conspired to relieve him of his earnings at the earliest pos- 

 sible moment. And with the aid of the spirit of pecuniary 

 recklessness which characterized the mariner ashore, and of the 

 chronic state of drunken irresponsibility which was all too 

 common, this was a task easily and speedily accomplished. 



The multitudinous and voracious landsharks formed the 

 nucleus of an organization which existed for the sake of rob- 



