THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 157 



venience an hour or a week. Like the original Kentuckian, 

 Nimrod Wildfire, we were spoiling for a, fight, when the 

 captain ordered the sacrifice of a pig to propitiate our pat- 

 ron saints. The offering was accepted, for the protesting 

 squeak of poor piggy was blended with the yell of " There 

 she blows!" and " Sperm-whale, sir." "Where away?" 

 roared the officers. And in answer was heard Hinton's 

 sweetest song, "Four points on lee bow." We squared in 

 the yards and kept off, and away we ran merrily. At two 

 miles' distance from what seemed a good whale, the boats 

 were lowered. The activity of the men, as they sprang bare- 

 footed into the boats and cast off the davit -tackles; the 

 readiness with which they handled the long, heavy oar, and 

 dropped them silently into the well -thrummed thole-mats, 

 and the ease with which they fell into the stroke, were won- 

 derful. Four boats were down and heading to leeward, 

 their course divergent, so that at two miles from the ship 

 we peaked our oars with a space of about one-third of a 

 mile between the boats, thus commanding a reach of nearly 

 two miles' front. 



As the boats thus ride the long, rolling swell of the sea 

 lightly and gracefully as an albatross (and I know nothing 

 more graceful than that), let us glance at the whale-boat and 

 its fittings. It is the fruit of a century's experience, and the 

 sharpened sense and ingenuity of an inventive people, urged 

 by the peril of the chase and the value of the prize. For 

 lightness and form ; for carrying capacity as compared with 

 its weight and sea-going qualities; for speed and facility of 

 movement at the word of command ; for the placing of the 

 men at the best advantage in the exercise of their power; 

 by the nicest adaptation of the varying length of the oar to 

 its position in the boat; and, lastly, for a simplicity of con- 

 struction which renders repairs practicable on board the 

 ship, the whale-boat is simply as perfect as the combined 



