138 NIMROD OF THE SEA; OR, 



oil. There is little danger attending their capture, though 

 they may sometimes capsize a boat, or stave in a plank or 

 two. A simple chance of drowning, or of being taken in by 

 a shark, is the only drawback. We took about forty bar- 

 rels of this oil, to meet the necessary expenses of our forced 

 visit to Payta. In the absence of the two runaway boat- 

 steerers, the captain gave his bow-oar chances in striking 

 these fish, as did the mate to the historian Posey ; and as 

 that auburn-haired hero saw beyond the tall hump of each 

 monster the smile of the Nantucket syren, his harpoon was 

 unerring as the barbed arrows of Cupid. 



Rounding the bleak, sandy point of Cape Blanco, the ex- 

 treme western land of the Western continent, we soon drop- 

 ped anchor in the familiar waters of Payta. We here ship- 

 ped eight men, two of whom professed to be boat-steerers. 

 " Long Tom," who shipped for the captain's boat, was a 

 specimen, New Bedford born and whaleman bred. Fire and 

 wreck had cast him ashore at Monterey, Mexico, and fearing 

 that a cruel fortune might cast him among the miserable 

 hide-droghers of California, he worked his way to Payta for 

 a chance of good society on board a whale-ship. Tom stood 

 six feet two in his bare feet, for stockings he had not. He 

 had a rough, good-natured, honest face, deep graven with 

 lines of suffering, sorrow, and care, but not one of discontent 

 and remorse. Thunder-scarred in brow, his heart was kind 

 and soft, as Dibdin sings. The remaining seven were the 

 rough drift of humanity continually cast up in these Span- 

 ish ports ; the refuse, or waste, of hundreds of whalers, seal- 

 ers, and merchantmen. Save that they appeared mainly very 

 promising food for the whale fight, they were not notable. 



New varieties of fruit having come in since our last visit, 

 we tested them, but found nothing to wean us from the 

 cherimoya. The ship was rich from the proceeds of our 

 black-fish oil ; and lest we might lack for vegetable diet, in 



