APPENDIX. 153 



think, two or three miles, and when he got half way up there Captain Miller up with the sails and 

 went off. The boat didn't come back. 



The next day the wind moderated, and we all went out, but didn't get to the whaling ground 

 until just at night. The next morning there was the Nero, with a great big whale alongside, and 

 they were cutting her in. We soon struck one. The whale made good play (as the whalemen 

 say), and we soon killed her and took her alongside. She made 28 barrels. That is what I 

 call a small take. We then cruised there some time longer, and our next move was to go north, 

 passing the island of Corvo and Flores, about latitude 42. There we cruised six weeks. When 

 we had been out a week or ten days it was very windy one morning, from the southwest, and we 

 discovered a whale coming up close to us. The captain said, " The wind is blowing so that we will 

 not lower down, but run her down." We reefed the sails and soon the whale went down. We 

 looked around another hour, but didn't see her at all. At the end of that time we discovered a 

 whale as much as five or six miles to the north of us, and we stretched on towards it, the wind 

 increasing all the time. Before we got to him he went down. He spouted some forty times in forty 

 minutes, and then went down and staid as long as that. When we got to about where we thought 

 be went down we luffed to. Pretty soon he came up. We lowered the boats and got quite near 

 him, but he moved off faster than we could. That was all we ever got near to in all the six weeks. 



Then we went in to recruit, to get potatoes, onions, and other fresh vegetables. In the morning 

 the wind was from the northwest, with a light, moderate breeze. We discovered a whale a long 

 distance ahead. We got our breakfast as the vessel was heading along that way. We saw the 

 whals when it went down, and we lowered our boats and rowed out to about where we thought 

 the whale disappeared. The captain said we better stop rowing, and we stopped. Pretty soon the 

 whale came up close to the mate's boat, and he pulled on and fastened to it. It was a monstrous 

 great whale. At that time we used what we called " drogues." We took pieces of thick board about 

 15 inches square, the boards crossing each other, with a square hole through them. Then we had 

 a piece of hard wood with a shoulder to it, and had a rope strapped to it, so that when we threw 

 the harpoon into the whale, having a warp 6 or 8 fathoms long, if the whale took to running she 

 would have this drogue to tow through the water. We worked on that whale for an hour and a half 

 and it never went down. At the end of the hour and a half we had got in six drogue irons. The 

 whale ran on the top of the water very swiftly. We could not get near enough to the whale so that 

 we could hurt it at all. We lanced it above the hump or behind the abdominal cavity. By and by 

 the whale went down and took about 400 fathoms of line. We carried 220 fathoms in each boat 

 and we had put the two together. I think we had 40 fathoms left. At this time the whale was 

 a good ways off. Whenever we attempted to approach him he would start. He went down six or 

 .seven times, and the last time the warp parted and he carried everything with him, and we never 

 saw him again till he was miles and miles away. If we had not put in the drogue irons we might 

 have held him up alongside and killed him. The next day we landed at Pico to get some grapes 

 and figs. All the whales we got made about forty barrels of oil. That was all we saw at the 

 Azores. 



The captain then conceived the idea of stopping out over winter. As the other vessels were 

 coming home, one spared us a little bread, another a little meat, and so we recruited out of the 

 other vessels. We left the Azores early in September and went to the Cape de Verde Islands. 

 When we arrived there we had pretty good reports. We went down to the Isle of Sal, which is a 

 salt island. There was no very good anchorage there on account of there being some sharp rocks 

 at the bottom, and we had hemp cables. During the winter while staying here we got our cables 

 chafed off several times. We remained here until the 10th of February. The wind was blowing 



