320 Voyage of the Novara. 



Esmeralda^ Captain Pierce, of New Bedford, Massaehus- 

 sets, to ask for surgical assistance for a sailor who, while 

 engaged a few days previously in hauling a captured fish 

 alongside, had had his left hand so severely injured hy 

 one of the lines, that amputation had seemed the sole 

 remedy. The Captain had, in genuine Yankee fashion, 

 assumed the duties of surgeon, and performed the operation 

 himself. Now that it was over, and when neither praise nor 

 censure could benefit the patient, he was anxious to know 

 whether he had done right or wrong. While one of the ship's 

 surgeons was getting ready, as requested by the captain, to 

 proceed to the bedside of his patient, the whaler informed us 

 he had already been absent from his family in the States five 

 months, and would proceed hence to the Sandwich Islands and 

 the Northern grounds, and finally return home round Cape 

 Horn. If the take of fish proved good, he hoped to complete 

 the voyage within two years. Whale-fishing, in truth, is not 

 only a very dangerous and laborious, but also a most precarious 

 pursuit. Occasionally a ship gets loaded within a brief space 

 with oil and whalebone, by which, of course, the owner or 

 charterer makes a splendid profit, and the entire crew obtain 

 a handsome share. But frequently does it happen that, after a 

 voyage of fifteen months and more, there is not a single fish 

 taken, in which case the hardy sailors, who are entirely de- 

 pendent for their pay upon a share of the spoil, have had all their 

 labour and undergone all their privations in vain, while the 

 freighter is poorer by a good round sum. The bare chance. 



