40 THE WHALEMAN'S ADVENTURES. 



as your veneration for one whom the colouring 

 of a youthful imagination has made a little 

 more than human, is not a little ahated hy 

 finding him subject to the necessities and 

 passions of poor human nature. Gonies, stink- 

 ards, horse-birds, haglets, gulls, pigeons, and 

 petrels, had all many a good morsel of blubber. 

 For at any time in these seas, though eight 

 hundred or a thousand miles from shore, the 

 capture of a whale will allure thousands of 

 sea-birds from far and near. Sharks, too, 

 appeared to claim their share; but it was not 

 until after a man had been down twice on the 

 wave-washed carcass, to get a rope fast to a 

 hole in the whale's head, or I should have 

 trembled for his legs. 



Before the blubber was all off, the huge 

 intestines of the whale burst out like barrels, 

 at the wounds made by the spades and lances. 

 I hoped the peeled carcass would continue to 

 float for the benefit of the gonies and other 

 birds. But no sooner was the last fold of 

 blubber off the flukes hoisted in, and the great 

 chain detached, than it sank plump down. 



