124 THE WHALEMAN'S ADVENTURES. 



fruits of many hours of severe toil, but a large 

 quantity of line and the harpoons also, besides 

 realizing the moral detriment and loss of spirits 

 necessarily connected with such a disappoint- 

 ment. 



Bad as this luck was, it was not attended 

 with loss of life like the following case I have 

 met with in "Fragments of a Sailor's Journal" 

 being a contribution to " The Sheet Anchor :" 

 We were cruising, says the author, somewhere 

 between the latitude of thirty-six and thirty-seven 

 degrees south, and the longitude of sixty-eight 

 degrees east, in search of right whales. It was in 

 the afternoon, and the ship was moving along 

 under her top-gallan tsails at the rate of about 

 five knots the hour. The most hardened grum- 

 bler could not find fault with the day. At the 

 fore and main top-gallant cross-trees were two 

 men on the look-out for whales. It was now 

 nearly four o'clock, when the man at the main 

 sung out, " There she blows !" He repeated 

 the cry regularly five or six times. All was 

 now excitement among the officers and men. 

 Every one was anxious to know if it was the 



