202 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



were enabled to find real satisfaction. The world-encircling 

 journeys of single whalers on single voyages offered intimate 

 contact with strange climes and stranger peoples. The luxu- 

 riant South Seas, the voluptuous Orient, and the barren wastes 

 of Arctic or Antarctic all came within the view of a whaling 

 hand. And with them came, too, their widely differing in- 

 habitants, from Fiji Islander to Eskimo. Granted that the 

 occasions for observation were woefully restricted, and that 

 the average foremast hand knew more about foreign brothels 

 and grog-shops than about lands and peoples, it still remained 

 true that many an insistent case of wanderlust found its re- 

 lief and indeed its cure in a whaling forecastle. And in an 

 industry which took so much from its human material, and 

 gave so little, such satisfactions were not to be overlooked. 



An even greater compensation, however, was the savage joy 

 of the chase which whaling offered to some (though by no 

 means to all) of its followers. To pursue the world's larg- 

 est creatures with short-range weapons and relatively simple 

 implements could not fail to appeal to an age-old hunting 

 instinct. And when such pursuit was carried on in a watery 

 environment both foreign and dangerous, there were untold 

 possibilities for the development of a royal sport. Regarded 

 purely as a form of sport, whaling has perhaps never had an 

 equal: even the hunting of tigers and of elephants had less 

 to offer to the ardent sportsman. Any one of a half-dozen 

 major and common exigencies of the chase, from a stove boat 

 to a "Nantucket sleigh-ride," afforded as much of thrill and of 

 dangerous excitement as mere man could well expect to sur- 

 vive. Few persons have ever lived to describe an intensity of 

 mingled fear and joy greater than that which came with the 

 pursuit and capture of an eighty-barrel "ugly" cachalot. 



In fact, whale-hunting was cast in such heroic proportions 

 that only the elect could appreciate it as a form of sport. 

 Many whalemen never succeeded in overcoming a terrifying 

 and paralyzing fear of "going on to a whale." And with what 

 excellent reason! The more hardy and adventurous hands, 

 however, and particularly the harpooners and boat-headers who 

 were responsible for the immediate strategy of the chase, often 

 secured the most intense pleasure from the hunt. One whale- 



