50 WHALING 



tain sent William Fakely and John Wise [Mason's own ap- 

 prentice] and Thomas Ayers the whalecutter, with Robert 

 Goodfellow, unto master Mason's ship, according as themselves 

 desir'd: but thinking there to be as kindly welcomed as the lost 

 Prodigal, these poor men, after their induring of so much misery, 

 which thro' his means partly, they had undergone, no sooner 

 came aboard his ship, but he most unkindly call'd 'em Runa- 

 ways, with other harsh and unchristian terms, far enough from 

 the civility of an honest man." 



The castaways did well, though, to thank God for their ''most 

 merciful preservation, and most v/onderfully powerful deliver- 

 ance." The story of the misadventures and sufferings of the 

 winter, which Pelham wrote, is fittingly named ''God's Pov/er 

 in the Preservation of eight men in Greenland, nine Months 

 and twelve Days." 



It is hardly possible for us to-day to comprehend the suffer- 

 ings of 16th- and 17th-Century voyagers in northern seas. In 

 the winter of 1633 and 1634 seven sailors left on the island of 

 St. Maurice died, one after another, leaving a journal in v/hich 

 the last survivor carried the narrative of their sufferings down 

 to the day when he wrote the final and unfinished entry. For 

 a while the records of whales sighted near at hand are inter- 

 spersed between his comments on the scurvy that with in- 

 creasing virulence attacked the men; but only once are whales 

 mentioned after the grim entry, "The 16th being Easterday, our 

 clerk died. The Lord have mercy upon his soul, and upon us 

 all, we being all very sick." 



If possible, the fate of seven other whalemen, who that same 

 winter were left at Spitzbergen, was even worse, for they were 

 tortured by various ailments, which are described in their 

 journal, and those who lived longest left this letter, which the 

 ships that came from Holland in the spring found in the hut 

 where the poor fellows had barricaded themselves against 

 bears: 



" Four of us that are still alive, lie flat upon the ground in our 

 huts; we believe we could still feed, were there one among us 

 that could stir out of his hut to get us some fewel, but nobody 



