A BOY WHO WENT WHALING 213 



Captain Owen Fisher hazed him until Hfe in the Lancer became 

 a torment. For a while the boy had a rough time of it but his 

 misfortunes served him better than he knew. 



Down in the South Atlantic, six or seven hundred miles north- 

 northeast of the Horn, two boats from the Lancer got fast to a 

 whale that made history. The first warning the oarsmen had 

 was the wild yell of the boat-steerer, ''Jump! Jump! Jump 

 for your lives!" 



Dropping his oar, Len turned in the larboard boat and saw 

 that the whale lay on its side and that the long lower jaw was 

 closing on boat and crew. He saw the black head, the white 

 mouth, and the small eye of the beast; then, jumping actually 

 out of its mouth, he dived into the sea as the jaws snapped to- 

 gether. 



The boat was stove to splinters, and Len Sanf ord was knocked 

 unconscious, but the waist boat picked him up with the others, 

 and though the boat-header was forced to cut loose to save their 

 lives, they later found the whale and got him alongside. It was 

 so rugged that they broke a blubber-hook cutting in, and it took 

 them six days to finish trying out the blubber. 



They cruised along the western coast of South America and 

 on the off-shore grounds — while standing his tricks at the wheel, 

 Len committed to memory Macaulay's ''Lays of Ancient 

 Rome"; in more ways than one he was an odd stick of a whale- 

 man — and in March they touched at Cocos Island, which lies 

 some three hundred miles off Panama, in the old track of 

 the galleons that carried treasure on the way from Peru to 

 Spain. 



There was scurvy in the crew, for months had passed without 

 shore leave, and they hastened to give some of the men the "earth 

 cure" by burying them for a time up to their necks, on the princi- 

 ple that fresh soil draws like a poultice. It is reported that the 

 treatment was efficacious. 



During the three days they spent there, young Sanf ord roamed 

 over the island from end to end. He tried to scale a mountain 

 peak, but was unable to penetrate the thick undergrowth. He 

 found beautiful birds, a few snails, and some pigs, and like 



