A BOY WHO WENT WHALING 217 



was a quiet, surly fellow, he was a good seaman and afraid of no 

 whale that ever spouted. Those who watched him could see 

 that the captain's order had keenly disappointed him; but the 

 men were glad enough to let Tom go. 



The vessel stood into the harbour, and the captain, leaving 

 her to lie off and on in charge of the mate until the next day, 

 went ashore to ship new hands and get the mail. 



The mate held her all night on a course that, in his judgment, 

 would bring her well to windward of the harbour by dawn, but 

 unsuspected currents carried her so far to leeward that, for 

 several hours after he discovered his position, he had to beat up 

 against a strong land breeze, which swept down from the 

 Cordilleras. He hoped thus to take advantage of the sea breeze 

 that sprang up every afternoon, and so enter the bay, take the 

 captain on board, and be off to the whaling grounds; but by the 

 middle of the morning the wind went down and left the ship 

 virtually becalmed, five or six miles off the promontory of 

 Paita. 



At eight bells — the very moment when the cook was bringing 

 forward the kids — there came simultaneously from the lookouts 

 at fore, main, and mizzen, the wailing cry, ''Thar blo-o-o-o-ows! 

 Blo-o-o-o-o-ows! Thar again! Blo-o-o-o-o-o-ows ! Blo-o-o-o- 

 o-o-ows!" 



The great black back of a sperm whale rose into plain sight a 

 mile off the lee beam. 



The men crowded rail and rigging and watched the whale, 

 which lay in the slow, oily seas, ''methodically puffing out his 

 vapoury jet, as leisurely as the smoke from the pipe of some fat, 

 dozing Dutchman.'' Each spout, instead of being a low, even 

 puff of white vapour, was notched and ragged. For the second 

 time they had sighted Paita Tom. 



It is hard for us to realize all that the sight of that infamous 

 old cetacean meant to a whaler's crew. It was very much as if 

 the Old Boy, wearing horns, tail, and hooves, were to rise up, 

 with the smell of brimstone and sulphur, before the congregation 

 of an Afro- American "Old-Ironsides-Baptist" church. 



As they watched him, he turned up his mighty flukes and 



